
>ft 




»m^p 







LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap, Copyright No. 

Shelf^Ji4/w<5" 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



-•"-" • : - . "■".•■■ ■ — -■■ ..•.:.■,;•: •■•:■■;■ 



"■ 



THE LITTLE LADY, SOME OTHER 
PEOPLE AND MYSELF. 




THK LITTLK LADY. 



0>e Qttle Duty, Some Otbcr 
People and myself. 




BY 
V 

TOM HALL, 

M 

Author of 
1 When Love Laughs," "When Hearts Are Trumps," etc. 




flew LJorft. 
36. U. MctrfcR 5 Company. 
70 ffiftb Bvenue. 






20 Oft 4 



Copyright, 1898, 
By E. R. Herrick & Co. 



WEED-PARSONS PRINTING COMPANY, 

PRINTERS AND ELECTROTYPERS, 

ALBANY, N. Y. 






TO MY CHILDREN. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE 



A Boy's Fads 15 

I Weed in the Garden 20 

My Pear Trees 23 

Coasting in Herkimer County 25 

An Annoying Compatibility of Temper.. . 28 
My Experience as an Instructor in Busi- 
ness ... 32 

Why I Want to Meet Mark Twain 36 

My Plaque 41 

My Summer in a Chicken-Coop 47 

Runnin' Wid de Machine 50 

Disciplining a Small Boy 54 

My Tomato Plants 58 

I Add to an Evening's Amusement 60 

A Brilliant Scheme 66 

The Fooling of the Fools 68 

The Sixth Sense 71 

My Cooking Class 75 

Election Bets in Our Town 79 

[9] 



lO TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

TAGE 

Explaining Things to a Small Boy 81 

Is This It? 83 

How I Befriended William 85 

The Romance of a Day 89 

How Cap Went to the Wedding 91 

How I Learned to Ride the Bike 95 

How We Photographed the Baby 99 

My Insurance Policy 102 

I Get Even With the Boys 107 

Her Observations 1 10 

How I Didn't Settle It 113 

An Effort at Economy 115 

Will Ver? 116 

Our Minister's Present 119 

On the Loss of My Clothes 122 

An Experience with Intuition 124 

Harold's Poem 127 

My Mare 130 

Painting Our House 133 

Our Motto 1 34 

A Communication 138 

The Summer Girl's Proverbs 140 

An Important Definition 141 

Not Up with Science 143 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. II 



PAGE 



Camping Out 45 

A Leap-Year Proposal in Philadelphia. . . . 148 

The Pugilists Who Met 149 

Asking Papa 151 

A New Constitution 153 

The Reason 155 

Love 156 

As Heard By Her 158 

Advice to the Sweet Girl Graduate 159 

Whist Signals 162 

Alas, Poor New Yorick 163 

The Reporter's Choice 164 

How 166 

The Stern Realities of War 168 

Baffled 1 70 

The Grammar of Matrimony 172 

A Commencement De Siecle Wedding 175 

A Successful Dramatist 178 

Fin De Siecle Arithmetic 180 

Literally, Literarily True 181 

Foolish Ambition of the Rich 182 

Cable Car Conduct 1 84 

Autumn 186 

Love 187 



12 TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

What He Remembered 188 

Condensed Guide to Politeness, 1 189 

A Domestic Conversation 190 

It is Spring 191 

A Letter to her Husband 192 

Condensed Guide to Politeness, II 194 

How to Behave 195 

Hints on Swimming 196 

The Hero Maker 198 

A Postmistress Pro Tern 207 







&*?m^» 




T BOUGHT him rattles as much for my 
1 own pleasure as his. It was a delight to 
me to see the little mite of humanity make 
a stir in the world. It was the same with 
his playthings. In fact, I often caught my- 
self lamenting the fact that they did not 
have such playthings when I was a boy. 

Presently, however, I discovered that he 
had been born with the human failing of 
"wanting things.' ' It was brought very 
forcibly to my attention by a demand from 
him for a box of tools. I did not like the 
idea of tools. And it was about time to 
teach him that he could not have everything 
he wanted, so I went over to a friend older 
and much wiser than myself and held a con- 
sultation. 

"Get him the tools/ ' said my friend. 
"He has got to take his chances of getting 
hurt all through life, and as for teaching 

[15] 



1 6 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

him that he can't have everything he wants, 
he has got to learn that for himself/' He 
got the tools. Then it soon became appar- 
ent that his desires were a continuous per- 
formance. 




After the tools, he wanted a cat to hunt 
rats with, and after the cat a dog to hunt 
cats with. Then he got in turn, a bicycle, 
skates, and a bob-sled. During the next 
summer he became a member of a baseball 
team, and concurrent with baseball came 
desires for chickens, white mice and rabbits. 
The next summer it was fishing and swim- 
ming, and the autumn succeeding it was 
football. That winter it was hunting, and 
I had to buy him a gun, although his mother 
protested, and to this day will not go to the 



A BOY'S FADS. 



17 



garret alone where it is kept, for fear it will 
go off. I only wish it would go off — and 
stay. 

About this time I had fond hopes for his 
future career, and began planning day 
dreams such as some years before I had had 
concerning myself. But it seemed more 
reasonable to dream of great things for him. 
He would be able to benefit by my advice, 
and that would be a great help. I had never 
followed my father's advice, but that was 
because he did not know nearly so much as 
I did. But it is plain to anyone that I know 
more than my boy does. So I asked him 
one day what he would like to be when he 
became a man. 




1 8 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

"A policeman," said he promptly. 

I went over to my wise old friend for con- 
solation. He merely laughed at me. 

"To-morrow, or a month hence, M said he, 
"he will want to be a fireman; then a street 
car driver. After that a postman and rail- 
road engineer. Later he will think seriously 
of becoming a cowboy and slayer of Indians. 
He will also plan to become a bareback rider 
in a circus, and he will rig up a trapeze in 
your back yard." 

"How long will this last? M I asked. 

"Oh, let me see," the old man replied, "I 
think until he begins to collect stamps. 
Yes, and after stamps will come birds* eggs, 
autographs, minerals and curiosities." 

"And after that? " I asked, dolefully 

"After that will come lighter exercise, 
tennis and horseback riding. Then will 
come music, and heaven protect you from 
the cornet. Try to steer him toward the 
flute or violin. The sounds of these may 
be more or less deadened, and you can make 
him practice in the barn. With the desire 
to make pleasant sounds will come the desire 
for girls. Yes, girls will come at last, and 
they are a fad which we never get over. 
Don't be worried, however. He will not 
want to get married right off. It will be 



A BOY S FADS. 



19 



after college and after a few love affairs. 
And the chances are that he will marry the 
right girl, even if she is not the girl you and 
your wife have picked out." 

r< Well, that will end the fads, anyway," I 
interjected. 

1 ' Not at all, ' ■ said my old friend. ' ' After 
that will come children. You're only a boy 
enjoying the latest of your fads yourself.' ' 

I suppose the old man is right. But I have 
one thing to look forward to. When that 
boy of mine is grown up and has children 
of his own, won't I have fun watching him 
bring them up? Oh, the trouble he'll have ! 
But ? confound it, come to think about it 
they'll be my grandchildren and another 
fad of my own. 





OOPYttCHT. 181T, vr 






I 



I WEED IN THE GARDEN. 

THE weeds grow in our garden with tropi- 
cal luxuriance. We'd (grab the pun 
before it gets away, it belongs to you | rather 
they wouldn't, but they grow right along 
just the same. Indeed, my wife expects to 
wear weeds when I die. She says 1 won't 
leave enough of an estate to buy clothes 
with. Well, I wouldn't get red-headed 
about the weeds if they would only be 
neighborly with the vegetables in our 
garden; but they won't — not even with 
the flowers. So we determined to get rid of 
them. That was two months ago. My 
wife called her friend Puss (a pretty girl) 
into consultation, and the plan adopted by a 
vote of two to one (I voting in the negative) 
was for me to pull the weeds out with my 
delicate, yet aristocratic hands. I filed a 
protest, but eventually promised to do the 
weeding when I got around to it. 

I did not get around to it until yesterday. 

The little lady and Puss went out for an 
extended trip on their wheels, and as I was 
in my lordliest humor, I concluded to give 

[20] 



I WEED IN THE GARDEN. 21 

them a surprise when they got back by hav- 
ing the garden nicely weeded for them. So 
I got a hoe and a rake and a scythe and a 
pick-axe and went to work. You should 
have seen those weeds disappear before my 
victorious onslaught. There was one im- 
mensely tall and thick weed that I took a 
keen delight in annihilating. It was such a 
large, audacious weed that I called it the 
Boss (T)weed of my garden. I must con- 
fess that I had some misgivings about some 
of the plants I weeded out. When I got 
through, the only things left standing were 
the tomato plants and the woodshed. I 
know tomato plants from their resemblance 
to geraniums. 

It was not until the ladies came home, 
however, that I discovered that I had weeded 
out all the vegetables save the aforesaid to- 
mato plants, and half of the flowers. And 
among the flowers that I destroyed were, I 
regret to say, my wife's favorite double 
poppies (query: Is a " double poppy" the 
father of twins?) and some Marshal O'Neil 
and Glory de Dungeon roses. The most 
precious product that I destroyed, however, 
was my wife's great bunch of sunflowers. 
Too late I learned that my Boss (T)weed was 
that particular kind of a flower. But there 



22 



THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 



is one glorious thing about it. Those women 
will not ask me to weed the garden again. 
Little by little I am eliminating work from 
my life; but the little lady says I am doing 
it on the same plan as I weeded the garden. 



MY PEAR TREES. 

1 DIDN'T believe a lot of rustics would 
have the nerve to fool with a real city 
man, when I came here to live in Hayville. 
I told them a few adventures of mine on the 
Bowery, and how I had once answered back 
a policeman (in the ante-Roosevelt era), and 
I thought I had scared the whole crowd. 
My ultimate object, in all this, was to keep 
the villagers away from the pear trees in 
the lot I had rented and which surrounded 
the house wherein I intended to live for- 
evermore. As the days moved carelessly 
by I smiled a knowing smile, and became 
more and more convinced that my big bluff 
about that Broadway policeman and my 
hints about man-traps, shot-guns, poison 
and bloodhounds had had their effect. And 
so it came to pass that I vaunted me in the 
public post-office (which is just outside the 
private post-office, where the postmaster and 
his family read the mail before they give it 
out) about my success, and derided the in- 
habitants of the whole county. 

[23] 



24 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

4 'Now, Meester," said the justice of the 
peace, in reply, "you must remember that 
your pears weren't fit to eat till to-day. 
Give 'em time." 

I told him that I would be in my house 
the next day and would give 'em buckshot, 
instead of time, if they ever stole any of 
my pears. 

Well, I would if they ever did. But the 
fact of the matter is, I haven't any pears. 
All of mine were stolen that same evening, 
before I moved in. I found a pitchfork 
under one of the trees, that had evidently 
been used for the purpose of pulling down 
some of the high-flying pears, and I awaited 
with delight the appearance of the owner. 
Who should the owner prove to be but that 
same old justice of the peace! He came 
around with the most innocent expression 
on his face imaginable, and said that the 
same crowd that stole my pears had stolen 
his pitchfork, and that he wanted to recover 
his property. I am really beginning to wish 
I were back among the dear old honest, 
simple, confidence men of New York. 



COASTING IN HERKIMER COUNTY. 

1USED to like to coast when I lived in St. 
Louis years ago. We boys used to catch 
the snow in bed sheets and carry it over to 
a hill, throw it on and get in a coast or two 
before it melted. I'm living now in Herki- 
mer county and I'm learning what snow, ice, 
north winds and coasting really are. 

The other day a young gentleman who 
saws my wood for me invited me to go coast- 
ing with him. I gladly assented, forgetting 
for the nonce that we are about two thou- 
sand feet above tide water at Troy. Nor 
did I take into consideration the fact that 
the descent in any direction from my home 
averages about four hundred feet to the mile 
for several miles. So I sat on the "Bob" 
or "Robert" sleigh, as I suppose it should 
be called, with satisfaction and calm. A 
moment later we started. 

When I recovered consciousness I dis- 
covered that we were sailing through the 
universe at the rate of twenty miles a 
minute. On either side there seemed to be 
a white mist which I soon found to be snow 

[25] 



26 THE LITTLE LADY ANT) MYSELF. 

clad hills and farms. We passed by them 
so quickly that the eye would get a sort of 
kaleidoscopic view only, and the roof of one 
farmhouse would appear to be attached to 
the body of another a mile or more away. 

"Lie down," shouted my Jehu. I did so, 
and we shot under a cow that was crossing 
the road. We went by her, or under her 
rather, so quiekly that she did not even 
notice us. It was the same with a wagon 
and a four-horse team. We went under the 
wagon and between the horses so quiekly 
that we were invisble, although I distinctly 
heard the driver remark, "Gosh! thought I 
heard somethin* swish!" Our next ad- 
venture was a trifle more exciting. The 
road made a turn at the foot of a hill, and 
at the turn stood a frame house. Our sleigh 
was going at such a rate that, of course, it 
jumped clear of the hill. We went in at a 
second-story window at the front of the 
house and came out at another at the back. 
A woman was sitting in the room we 
traversed rocking a baby. I lifted my hat to 
apologize for our rudeness, but the apology 
was made to a young lady a mile further on, 
who did not seem to understand. 

I do not know exactly when we passed 
Troy, Albany and Peekskill, but in the 



COASTING IN HERKIMER COUNTY. 2J 

course of time, much to my wonder, we 
came to a full stop. 

4 'Well, Mister," said the young man, 
"How's that for a three-mile slide? Here 
we are in Middleville. " 

"Young man," I answered, solemnly. 
"Don't try to deceive one so old in the ways 
of this wicked world. This may look like 
Middleville and I acknowledge that it smells 
like it. But nevertheless it is and must be 
Harlem. Show me the way to the nearest 
station of the Sixth Avenue L, if you 
please. ' ' 



AN ANNOYING COMPATIBILITY OF 
TEMPER. 

Breathes there a man, and he is wed, 
Who never to himself has said: 
11 I wish, by Jingo, I was dead?" 

WHEN I married it was my luck to get a 
woman with the sweetest disposition 
that ever smoothed the wrinkles out of the 
brow of care. The result is that I am lazy, 
shiftless, good for-nothing; unknown to 
fame and in debt to the grocer. In fact I 
am the kind of a man who shuffles around 
with his hands in his pockets and an old 
corn-cob pipe sticking out of the northeast 
corner of his mouth, too durned happy and 
contented to get out of the way of a runa- 
way team if it happens to be coming in my 
direction. 

When I see a rich man, a successful man, 
or a famous man, I say to myself: "Now 
that fellow had the luck to get a nagging 
wife. He had to hustle just to keep his 
mind from his misery. ' ' Talk about genius. 
It's all rot. It's a nagging wife that does 
the business every time. I could instance a 

[28] 



ANNOYING COMPATIBILITY OF TEMPER. 29 

number of cases, but I don't want to give the 
poor, suffering great men of my country 
away. 

If I had only been provided with a wife 
who would call me an infernal ass about 
'steen times a day, pitch my pipes and to- 
bacco into the street, make me comb my hair 
and waylay me with a rolling pin every time 
I came back from a political or other dis- 
cussion at the post-office, I might in time 
amount to something. As it is, look at me, 
or rather look the other way. 

When I do occasionally take pen in hand 
and do a little work my wife insists that the 
product is the best literature ever furnished 
to the helpless American public. Every 
time I write anything she assures me that it 
is the best thing I ever wrote, and one time 
she even insisted that my penmanship was 
improving. I tried to get her to change the 
formula once by copying out the multiplica- 
tion table and offering it to her as a speci- 
men of may burning genius. But she didn't 
see the joke at all. On the contrary, she 
earnestly declared that it was far better 
than anything I had ever written before. 

And so it goes with everything else. She 
is just as well contented with candles as elec- 
tric lights, with calico as silk, and with 



30 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

pebble as diamonds — although I will admit 
that she hasn't had much experience with 
diamonds yet. I have begged her on my 
knees to get mad at me and find fault with 
me. I have pointed out to her what I might 
become if she would only act as other men's 
wives do. But she is incorrigible. I have 
convinced her of the fact that it is all her 
fault that I amount to nothing. She meekly 
acknowledges the error of her ways and 
says she cannot help it. 

Not long ago I tried to startle her into 
making some kind of a protest at a more 
than usually insane proposition of mine. 
I went home in a pretended hurry one 
day and told her to pack up immediately, 
as I intended starting for the North Pole 
and taking her and the baby along with 
me. 

She was delighted, and began packing up 
at once. And that night when she was put- 
ting the baby to bed I overheard her saying 
to our future President : 

4 'Would 'im's blessed heart like to play 
with the little icebergs? ' To which the 
baby replied: 

"Yeth, ma'am, wif tunnin' little baby ice- 
bergs." 

The next morning I informed her that I 






ANNOYING COMPATIBILITY OF TEMPER. 3 1 

had abruptly changed my plans, and that I 
intended to start for the equator instead. 

1 ' Oh, ' ' said she, ' ' that will be ever so much 
more delightful. And it won't cost nearly 
as much for clothes and food ; and you, poor, 
dear boy, you won't have to work nearly so 
hard, will you? " 

I give it up. 

What are you going to do with a woman 
like that? 



MY EXPERIENCE AS AN INSTRUCTOR 
BUSINESS. 



IN 




1 



AWOKE one morning last 
week in an unusually good 
humor, and, after a brain food 
breakfast, prepared for a morn- 
ing stroll in order to commune 
with Nature. Unfortunately 
for my projected stroll, I dis- 
covered that every hat I owned 
was several sizes too small for 
me, on that particular morning, 
and I was compelled ex necessi- 
tate, as we used to say in Rome, to loaf around 
the house and make myself disagreeable to 
the women folks. The fact is that I had 
made a couple of dollars on the previous day 
and had said something so funny that it 
made Somebody laugh. I have since tried 
to find out from Somebody what it was that 
I said, but he has forgotten. I have also 
blown in the couple of dollars. My hats fit 
better now, thank you. 

I had to have a victim on this particular 
morning, however, and (just as any other 

[32] 



MY EXPERIENCE AS AN INSTRUCTOR. 33 

man would do under the circumstances) I 
picked out the most available one — my wife. 
I determined that I would give her a lesson 
in business methods. She is so young she 
does not have to lie about her age, and every 
time she transacts any business she is im- 
posed upon — as soon as I find it out. My- 
self am a business man from away back. I 
have never made a cent in a business trans- 
action yet, but I have had lots of experience. 
And if experience does not make a business 
man, what does? 

On this particular morning the rag man 
came, and I scented my opportunity (and 
him) from afar. The little lady brought 
forth a bag of rags that she had been saving 
up and proceeded to bargain. I took a 
cup of strong tea, lit a ten-cent cigar, and 
got my kinetic energy going like a buzz 
saw. 

1 'How many pounds?" asked the little 
lady, anxiously. 

"Just fifteen pounds," answered the rag 
man, "hefting" the bag, as they say in the 
rural districts. 

11 Weigh it/' said I, in my most authorita- 
tive manner. The rag man pulled a pair of 
battered scales from his hip pocket, hooked 
them to the bag quite silently, and exhibited 

3 



34 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

the result. The scales showed just fifteen 
pounds. 

"What a splendid guess! " exclaimed the 
little lady, enthusiastically. 

"How much will you take for the scales? " 
I growled in my most cynical manner. 

Well, after some further bargaining and 
after throwing in three cents to boot (the 
rags went at a cent a pound), the little lady 
emerged from the mclSe with a sauce pan 
that the rag man said was cheap at twenty 
cents. After this I took the little lady into 
my study and read aloud to her eight chap- 
ters from a book on domestic economy. 
Then I borrowed a hat from a large man 
who lives across the street and took the little 
lady and the sauce pan she had just acquired 
in barter and trade, up to the village store. 
The storekeeper said he would be glad to 
sell us one just like it (only cleaner) for ten 
cents. I smiled in triumph. But the little 
lady's lips quivered, and I was afraid she 
was going to cry right then and there. 
After we got home I went into my study 
and spent the rest of the day luxuriating in 
the thought of my cleverness. 

After supper, however, the little lady 
came to me, kissed me on my talented fore- 
head and spake thus : 



MY EXPERIENCE AS AN INSTRUCTOR. 35 

11 My dear, I know I was very foolish, and 
I won't do so any more. I was only trying 
to help along the best I could. I spent 
hours getting those old things together just 
so I could add a little something to our store 
without spending your hard-earned money 
every time. But I'll be more sensible the 
next time." 

Then I wanted to take an evening stroll 
and think some more. But, do you know, 
every one of my hats had grown so big that 
the gentle evening zephyrs blew them away 
in succession before I could get from the 
front door to the gate ! 

I wish somebody would invent an adjusta- 
ble hat. I want one badly. 




WHY I WANT TO MEET MARK TWAIN ON A 

DARK, LONELY ROAD AT MIDNIGHT— 

I BEING ARMED TO THE TEETH 

AND HE DEFENSELESS. 

BLOOD! REVENGE! ! 

Many innocent people will remember 
an article upon railway travel written by 
one Mark Twain, and published some time 
ago in an influential magazine. In it he 
suggested a plan by which the passenger 
could obtain courtesy and other things from 
the railway officials with whom he was 
thrown in contact on his wanderings. The 
plan was simplicity itself. It was merely to 
claim an acquaintance with one of the high 
officials of the road and demand something 

[36] 



WHY I WANT TO MEET MARK TWAIN. 3? 

better than ' ' A i " in the matter of treat- 
ment. The plan struck me as being a good 
one. Mark said he used it himself with un- 
failing success, and ever since I heard the 
story of the "Jumping Frog" I have be- 
lieved that it would be utterly impossible 
for Mark to tell a lie. Consequently I de- 
termined to use it on the first possible 
occasion. 

Now, it happens that I do not travel much ; 
but a short time ago business took me from 
New York to Chicago. When I purchased 
my ticket at the Grand Central Station I 
murmured these magic words to the clerk : 
"I am a warm personal friend of Mr. De- 
pew's." The clerk smiled but said nothing. 
However, the smile was encouraging at a 
time when I needed encouragement. The 
fact is I'm not much of a liar myself. Any 
of my friends will tell you that. I was just 
a trifle disappointed though. I had expected 
a considerable reduction in the rate if not a 
pass from that ticket seller. And the fellow 
not only gave me the exact change, but he 
worked off a counterfeit half dollar on me! 
"Perhaps he thinks I'm so rich I won't 
notice a mere half dollar," I reasoned with 
myself. "No doubt all Mr. Depew's warm 
personal friends are rich. ' ' I passed on to 



38 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

the seller of the sleeping car tickets, undis- 
mayed. 

4< A lower berth for Chicago," said I. 

1 'Lower berths all sold, sir. Have an 
upper? " 

"But, my good man," I suggested, "Mr. 
W. Seward Webb, 4 Sew' as I call him, is a 
first cousin of mine." 

"Oh! I meet lots of Mr. Webb's cousins," 
said the clerk. "In fact he has issued 
orders disowning all his cousins, male and 
female. ' ' I left the window in high dudgeon. 
I don't know what "dudgeon" is, but I have 
often heard the expression. 

I made my way to the Chicago sleeper. 
The porter asked for my ticket, but I told 
him I would buy one from the conductor. 

"I'm a warm personal friend and business 
associate of Depew's," said I, sot to voce. 

(There's another term I wot not of, except 
that it sounds well.) 

"You're another of them, are you? " said 
the porter with a chuckle and giving me a 
dig in the ribs. "Oh, I meet lots of them." 
But he let me pass and I took a seat in the 
smoking compartment. 

There were two gentlemen in the smoking 
compartment, and I dropped into conversa- 
tion with them. I like my little joke and I 



WHY I WANT TO MEET MARK TWAIN. 39 

told them of my adventure with the ticket 
sellers and the porter, and bade them watch 
me work the sleeping car conductor. They 
were greatly amused, and one of them said 
there was nothing he liked better than a 
good joke. They promised to stay and see 
the fun. 

Eventually the train started and the sleep- 
ing car conductor made his appearance. My 
two companions preserved a dignified si- 
lence. I was fearfully afraid they would 
grin ahead of time and thus give me away, 
but they behaved admirably. They acted 
as though they had never spoken a word to 
me in their lives. 

"A lower berth to Chicago/' said I, non- 
chalantly. 

" Lower berths all gone sir — one upper 
left. Will you have that? " 

"Certainly not," I answered with some 
asperity. "I am an intimate friend and 
business associate of Dr. Depew's. If I do 
not get a lower berth on this train he shall 
most certainly hear of it." 

"I am very sorry — " began the conductor. 
But I did not let him proceed. I saw that I 
was making an impression and I determined 
to strike while the iron was hot. 

"Moreover, I am the favorite first cousin 



40 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

of Mr. W. Seward Webb, and he shall hear 
of it also." 

"You know them? " exclaimed the con- 
ductor in blank amazement. 

"Know them?" said I. "Why we were 
boys together. They're both in Europe 
now, but when they get back you'll hear 
from me." 

"Why — why — this is Dr. Depew," said 
the conductor, pointing to one of the gentle- 
men in the smoking compartment, "and this 
is Mr. Webb." The two gentlemen began 
laughing uproariously. 

I am a man of action and there was but 
one thing to do. I flung my bag through 
the window of the flying train and jumped 
out after it. 

But the worst I have not told to you. 

I have since learned that Depew and Webb 
were actually in Europe at the time. The 
conductor had simply called my bluff and 
made a bigger one. 

But if ever I meet Mark Twain, under the 
circumstances enumerated above, pray for 
him! 




COMMITTED it 
several years ago, 
and this is my confes- 
sion. It is also the ex- 
position of the cruel and 
unusual punishment that has 
been visited upon a free-born 
American citizen in utter de- 
fiance of the Constitution. And 
i it is a mild hint to Congress to give 

me some redress. 
I will preface my remarks by saying that 
I could not draw a right line with a ruler, 

[41] 



42 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

My professor of drawing at West Point once 
looked over my shoulder while I was en- 
deavoring to depict a scene from Nature with 
a crayon. Then, like Washington at Mon- 
mouth, he uttered an oath for the first time 
in his life. But he never looked at any of 
my wcrk again. If he had he would never 
have permitted me to graduate. 

It was shortly after I was married that it 
occurred, and my wife and I had a young 
lady friend (those last two words sound too 
New Yorky to be literature, but they will 
have to go) who used oil colors very deftly. 
I determined to learn. She was very kind 
and appeared interested in me, as it were, 
and she started me copying a donkey's head 
on a plaque. I traced in the outlines that 
same day, and she promised to come over 
and start me with the colors the next day. 
On the morrow, however, it rained pitch- 
forks and bayonets, and she signaled from 
her house that she could not come over. 
Now I have an impatient temperament and 
a foolish desire to go ahead and do things 
whether I know how to do them or not. I 
spread some assorted colors on my palette, 
grabbed a handful of brushes and waded in. 
I was going to say that before the day was 
over I waded in oil up to my knees. It was 



MY PLAQUE. 43 

in reality down to my knees, for I saved 
enough of my trousers to make a very ser- 
viceable pen-wiper. My coat and vest I 
gave to the poor. The poor gave it to the 
rag man. 

But I completed my plaque just the same, 
and I hung it on the wall to be admired. 
That evening my friend Jones came in to 
play a game of chess. He doesn't mind the 
weather, and he likes my tobacco. 

"Jones, old boy," I said to him, pointing 
to my plaque, "what do you think of that 
for an Old Master? " Jones took a squint. 

"One of your ancestors? M he inquired. 

Fortunately I know that Jones is near- 
sighted. 

The next day my little preceptress came 
over to give her lesson. She took one look 
at my completed product, and then she left 
the room and sought my wife. Then those 
two fool women went out to the barn and 
had hysterics. I felt that they were weep- 
ing, and followed later to console them, 
though I knew not the reason of their sorrow. 
What do you suppose they were doing? 
They were laughing. They were both red 
in the face, and they had taken off their 
belts for safety. As I tried to make my 
sneak and study the matter over I heard my 



44 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

preceptress say to my wife, " What shall I 
say to him? I don't want to hurt his feel- 
ings, but just look at it! One ear is eight 
inches higher than the other. One eye is 
green and the other purple. And the 
prominent nostril looks like the Mammoth 
Cave." That made me mad. I took that 
plaque down and went over to see Mrs. 
Smith, a nice, quiet, appreciative little 
woman who doesn't know too derned much 
about art. I made her a present of it, and 
then I did the offended dignity act until 
those two women were heartily ashamed of 
themselves. 

But they were right. I have seen a great 
many paintings since then and have studied 
them carefully. I have met many artists 
and talked with them. I have also met 
many asses in real life. And a day came 
when I wanted to take that infernal plaque 
and tear it limb from limb. But nice, 
quiet, appreciative Mrs. Smith wouldn't let 
me have it. To her it was a clief cVoeuvre, 
and a whole menu in French besides. I 
ground my teeth and accepted my fate as 
stoically as I could. 

Well, the Smiths had a fire the other 
night. Their house was burned to the 
ground. I love them, but I got out of bed 



MY PLAQUE. 45 

and went to that fire with all the kerosene 
in the house, determined to help it along all 
I could. When I arrived at the scene of the 
conflagration (as the young newspaper re- 
porter says) Mrs. Smith fell into my arms. 

"Oh, Mr. Hall," she cried, "we have lost 
almost everything, but we have saved your 
plaque/' 

That settled it. Now, when the twilight 
falls, and there is in the sky that "clear 
obscure" 

14 Which follows the decline of day 
As twilight melts beneath the moon away.*' 

I go out to the uttermost confines of our 
two-acre lot and softly swear. Then I 
spend an hour regaining my peace of mind. 
After which I say my prayers, retire, and 
endeavor not to dream of that confounded 
plaque. 




My Summer in a Chicken-Coop. 



MY SUMMER IN A CHICKEN-COOP. 

TTTO amuse the little lady and the youngsters 
i I bought six hens and a rooster. Then 
I had a chicken-coop erected and the fowls 
incarcerated. Life in the country is rather 
dull for the little lady. She is more accus- 
tomed to the buzz, hum, and whirr of the 
wilds of New York. She thought she would 
like to hunt for eggs, and the youngster 
assured me he would like to play with "little 
chick-chicks/ ' When he said so I mentally 
ejaculated, ' ' Heaven help the chick-chicks ! ' ' 
But the hens and the rooster were bought 
and delivered about sundown and each of 
them named within an hour. The next 
morning I arose and ascended to my study 
in the attic with the firm determination of 
writing, from "morn till noon," a poem 
that would bring me in at least ten dollars 
and a sketch that would sell in the market 
for five; also of writing, "from noon till 
dewy eve," a short story that would easily 
sell anywhere for twenty-five units of the 
necessary. Total, forty dollars. I had no 
sooner seated myself at my desk, however, 

[47] 



48 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

and got mine eye into a fine frenzy rolling, 
than I heard a scream and the little lady 
rushed in to inform me that "Grace" had 
escaped from the coop and was out in the 
garden. I dopped my prose and poetry and 
adopted grim-visaged war. In other words, 
I went out into the garden and took com- 
mand. 

On the right I stationed my wife, on the 
left our hired girl and in the center the 
youngster. I myself remained in the rear 
as commander-in-chief and reserve. I will 
not detail the many evolutions of that cam- 
paign. I am too modest to dwell upon the 
excellence of my strategy. Suffice it to say 
that my brave troops eventually succeeded 
in reaching their objective, and by noon the 
next day Grace surrendered at discretion 
and was cooped up where we wanted her. 
We changed her name then to Maud, because 
she came out in the garden. We had origi- 
nally named her Grace because she was the 
prettiest and the whitest of our hens, and we 
knew of a young lady of that name who was 
as pretty and white as a young girl can be, 
which is saying a great deal. 

After that we had many other experiences. 
The little lady had lots of fun hunting for 
eggs, but she usually found that her hens 



MY SUMMER IN A CHICKEN-COOP. 49 

had laid them up at the store, and that the 
proprietor would not surrender them with- 
out the passing of coin. I did not have to 
spend my whole summer in a chicken-coop, 
however. As the spring wore on I had 
more experiences. My rooster had some 
fighting blood in him and was much prized 
by several of our villagers. He disappeared 
mysteriously. Two of my hens were killed 
by rats and two died. What the latter 
couple died of I really cannot say. Every 
farmer within ten miles has assigned a 
different disease as the cause. I have made 
a combination of the names of these diseases 
and consider it the cause of their demise; 
but it is too long to repeat in one breath or 
get into one sentence. Maud, true to her 
instinct, again came out into our garden and 
then went into a neighbor's. I have a 
strong suspicion that she is now in that 
neighbor's chicken-coop, but as he and I are 
the very best of friends I do not like to 
say anything. At present I have one hen 
left, and I am wondering. 
4 




UNNIN' 

WID DE 
MACHINE. 



JFHERE 
A hasn't 
been a fire 
in our vil- 
1 a g e in 
four gen- 
erations, excepting 
those that I get tip 
winter mornings to 
build for my wife. 
But they got a hand 
engine over in Milk- 
ville, and when we 
heard of it and con- 
sidered the fact that 
we had ten more citi- 



[50] 



RUNNIN' WID DE MACHINE. 5 1 

zens and an old maid more than they had in 
Milkville, we gritted our teeth, determined 
that we, too, would have an engine, and that 
we would paint it red. 

We got our engine. We purchased our 
uniforms. And then we waited for a fire. 

But there was no fire. 

When we first bought our engine (never 
mind the grammar, I am speaking in the 
popular phraseology of the day) our insur- 
ance rates were promptly reduced. But 
later, when developments came to the ca- 
pacious ears of the insurance agents, the 
rates were doubled. The fact is every one 
in town got to wishing that somebody's 
house would burn down, just so we could 
show what we could do with our machine. 
This feeling became so intense that after 
a while (and after a number of ingenious 
combustible contrivances had been dis- 
covered in close proximity to houses that 
looked as if they would make a picturesque 
fire) no man in the town spoke to any other 
man. In fact we all bought shotguns and 
patrolled our premises during the night, re- 
luctantly permitting our wives to do all the 
work that was to be done, in the broad light 
of day. 

I do not know what would have happened 



52 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

if a little relief had not come from Curd 
Corners, seven miles away. One of their 
village wise men got mad at his wife be- 
cause she could not make green wood burn 
in their cook stove and endeavored to show 
her how, with the contents of a kerosene 
lamp. 

They called us up by telephone and we re- 
sponded like "heroes," as they say in South 
Africa. Every man put on his best uniform 
and polished up his helmet before we 
started. I even went so far as to turn my 
cuffs, for I vowed that if I had to die fight- 
ing the fierce flames I would die like a gen- 
tleman. Then we started for Curd Corners. 
You should have heard the women and chil- 
dren cheer us as we raced out of town. 

But oh, what a long seven miles that was 
to Curd Corners! I do not believe we 
would have ever arrived at our destination 
if it had not been for Bill Smith. He is our 
assistant foreman and runs the village 
saloon. Fortunately he brought the saloon 
along with him. He had most of it wrapped 
up in old copies of the Raines Law. This 
to deceive the women and children. 

Well, we got to Curd Corners in the course 
of several hours and you should have heard 
the Curd Cornerites yell. They were try- 



runnin' wid de machine. 53 

ing at the same time to save the Methodist 
church, and they were delighted. We 
dashed up to a well with a wild hurrah. But 
we didn't pump any water. The fact of the 
matter was, we had forgotten to bring along 
the pipe that you drop down into the well. 
I don't know what its name is, although I 
tried to catch it while our foreman was 
cussing at us. 

The mean part of it was, however, that 
the Curd Cornerites were ungentlemanly 
enough to jeer at us, and suggest that we 
turn to and help in the bucket lines. But we 
wouldn't do anything so far beneath our 
dignity as that. We went silently home. 

We have since disbanded our company 
and have sold our machine to the people of 
Curd Corners. 



DISCIPLINING A SMALL BOY. 







— uyi 






^J&lfii 


1 






VVv* 


1F^ 






SB 


9k ^ 




v*^. 


■Viq/0^^- 





M 



OST of the fathers 
in the land will 
understand just what 
I am going to say, 
merely from the title 
of this sketch. They 
need not listen to my 
tale of woe unless they 
wish to. This is an 
appeal for sympathy, 
but it is made to those 
who do not under- 
stand the situation. 
The boy is two and a half years old. Ac- 
cording to the family Bible I am thirty- 
three, but, after an analytical study of my 
symptoms, I am convinced that in the last 
two years and a half I have jumped to a 
hundred and thirty-thiee years of age and 
more of experience. 

When the youngster made us his first bow, 
I went immediately to the seller of tomes 
and bought a copy of Herbert Spencer's 
"Education." Of this 1 made a study, was 

[54] 



DISCIPLINING A SMALL BOY. 55 

much impressed, and with a whack of my 
fist on the table declared that our boy should 
never be spanked. Since then I have often 
wondered if Herbert ever had any children. 

But Herbert was not our only guide, 
philosopher and friend (?). Our boy had 
(besides his parents) grandmothers, great- 
grandmothers, five hundred thousand aunts 
and one million cousins. One of the aunts 
was a kindergarten sharp. She declared 
imperatively that he ought not to have any- 
thing to play with, for two years, but a red 
ball. It was hard to hear this, but we sup- 
posed she ought to know. It brought a bit 
of a swear word from me, that ultimatum 
did, and my wife had a cry over it. The 
fact is we had been looking forward to the 
day when his plump little fist would grasp a 
rattle and shake it until his eyes danced with 
joy. He got the rattle, and he got more. 
In fact large areas of our dwelling look like 
a toy shop. I suppose he should have had 
nothing but the red ball ; but we are human. 

Then we determined to run that boy our- 
selves, and we removed ourselves far, far 
away from anything in the shape of a rela- 
tive. It was then that we discovered that 
an occasional spanking was an absolute 
necessity and a tonic as well. I have given 



$6 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

Herbert's book to a new father and am 
enjoying the fun he is having with it. At 
the same time it was hard to do the spank- 
ing, and I devoutly thank heaven that I 
have finally finessed his mother into doing 
most of it. 

We tried other disciplinary methods, how- 
ever. One of our first was to make him 
stand in a corner, with his face to the wall. 
This worked beautifully for a month or so. 
Then he got to going into the corner of his 
own accord and grinning at us, with one 
eye slanted in our direction to see if we ap- 
preciated the joke. We went back to spank- 
ing. Later in his career he adopted the 
boyish habit of running away. We tried 
picketing him out to a tree. It worked all 
right as long as he thought he was playing 
horse. But when he discovered the trick 
that had been played on him he uttered such 
a pitiful yell that his mother, with a worried 
brow and a determined contraction of the 
dimple in her chin, went out and freed him. 
Ten minutes later I saw her chasing up the 
street after him, her arms covered with dough 
and her hair on anything but straight. She 
found him at the post-office reciting to the 
men who most do congregate in such places a 
poem about a certain ' ' Fat Man of Bombay. ' ' 



DISCIPLINING A SMALL BOY. S7 

Our last resource failed us not long ago. 
We tried putting him to bed. But it did not 
worry him a little bit. He amused himself 
learning to whistle and made rapid progress. 
But I have made up my mind what to do. 
I am going to get the government to give 
me a detail of a couple of army officers to 
take charge of his discipline. To take some 
of the strain from them I am going to hire 
four tutors from assorted colleges; and to 
take some of the strain from their nervous 
systems I am also going to hire eight trained 
nurses. Who is to help the nurses I have 
not figured out yet, but I may be able to do 
so later. I sincerely hope that none of these 
fourteen disciplinarians have heard of him. 
There he is now in the middle of the street. 
He has stopped a hay wagon and is standing 
in front of the horses saying, "Nice, whoa." 
The man who is driving is cussing under his 
breath ; I can tell by the expression on his 
face. But he will have to wait till I get 
through with this before I go out and drag 
that boy away. 

However, I have hopes of this last scheme. 
But if it does not work, will some kind 
friend, who is older and wiser than myself, 
please tell me what to do? 



MY TOMATO PLANTS. 

AFTER I had weeded my garden there 
was nothing left of it but three tomato 
plants, and rather sickly looking ones they 
were, too. But I was proud of them never- 
theless, for I had both planted them and 
spared them. The more they did not flourish 
the more I called attention to their good 
qualities, until they became a joke in the 
neighborhood and the subject of many a 
jest between my wife and pretty Puss. The 
more they joked me, however, the more I 
loved my plants, and I stood by them loyally. 

One morning, to my great delight, I found 
the green vines bearing little green toma- 
toes, and a proud man I was. I went among 
my neighbors and told thereof, and to my 
unspeakable delight I found that my plants 
were the only ones in town that had begun 
to bear. Most of the others hadn't bios* 
oomed yet. In fact I had not noticed mine 
blossom, but then I am not a very noticeable 
man (I have a dim suspicion that I have not 
said what I mean). 

My tomatoes created quite a furore in 
[58] 



MY TOMATO PLANTS. $g 

town, you may be sure, and most of my 
friends and all of my enemies came down to 
see them. And as they went away they 
laughed, and even while they looked at 
them many of them had the audacity to grin. 
I do not see the point of the joke yet, al- 
though I suppose there was one. But the 
fact was that those little green tomatoes 
didn't belong to my vines at all. The girls 
had sent South for them and had tied them 
on with green string. 

I will get even with those women some 
day — that is, I will get even with Puss. I 
am even with my wife. I got even with her 
for many subsequent wrongs when I mar 
ried her. 



Kl/taTnllfifi 




rVERY one knows that I am modest. Per- 
Ci haps the great, wide world is not aware, 
however, of the fact that I am bashful as 
well. I do not like to put myself forward 
publicly before either large or small audi- 
ences. This peculiarity, together with an 
aversion to killing ducks, will eventually 
prevent my becoming President of the 
United States. However, let that pass. I 
have made up my mind to it, and there is 
no need for consolation. Hank Clay, Dan 
Webster, Jim Blaine and I will seek out a 

[60] 



I ADD TO AN EVENING'S AMUSEMENT. 6 1 

quiet spot somewhere in the great unknown 
and play a consolation game of whist until 
the last trump is turned. 

But — does it not seem to you that I am 
diverging from the original subject of this 
sketch? 

To return to it, therefore, I will say that 
we (the little lady and myself) were invited 
to an evening's amusement at the Blakes'- 
The Blakes are nice people who make you 
dress up and go out somewhere on cold, 
chilly evenings when you would much pre- 
fer to be burning the soles off your socks 
before your own grate fire. On account of 
my extreme bashfulness I am usually an 
incubus on such occasions. I am always 
saying something I ought not to, or doing 
something at the wrong time. Latterly I 
have hit upon the plan of saying and doing 
nothing. But this does not satisfy the little 
lady. She says it makes people wonder how 
she ever came to marry such a perfect fool 
as I am. She does not want them to wonder 
at it. She would much prefer that I should 
appear brilliant to the neighbors, dunce 
though I may be at home. At any rate she 
made me promise to make a stab at trying 
to pretend I was brilliant, and that evening 
she made me promise to do everything I 



62 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

was asked to do, and take part in all the 
festivities of the occasion. She was sorry 
afterward. But I did the best I could, as 
you shall see. 

Well there was a fair, pale young girl 
from the city at the Blakes' that evening. 
She had received her education abroad and 
thumped the piano with both hands. She 
also spoke French without consulting the 
dictionary ever and anon, and was an all- 
round wonder. I was sitting on a fauteuil 
trying to look as graceful as possible under 
the circumstances, when the fair, pale young 
girl swung herself around the orbit of the 
piano stool and asked me if I wouldn't sing. 
Now I can't sing. That's the plain state- 
ment of the case. When I was at school the 
music teacher used to ask me with tears in 
his eyes not even to try. I don't know one 
tune from another, with the exception of 
"Old Hundred," and I only know that be- 
cause it is so short. Naturally I was just 
going to decline when I thought of my 
promise to the little lady. I wouldn't break 
a promise to her for anything in this 
world. 

"With pleasure," I answered the fair, pale 
young girl, and stepped briskly to her side. 
They told me afterward that the little lady 



I ADD TO AN EVENING'S AMUSEMENT. 63 



fainted when I did this. A woman always 
knows when to faint. 

4 'Do you read at sight ? " asked the fair, 
pale young girl. 

"Entirely by sight, " I answered, wonder- 
ing if there were people who read with their 
ears. 

"I am so glad," she 
lisped, "I have here an 
aria that I brought with 
me from abroad. It is for 
a baritone voice and I am 
sure it will please you. 
Let's begin at once." 

With that she began 
playing. Now I wasn't 
fool enough to begin 
singing right off. I 
knew that there is al- 
ways a little salute, as 
one might say, on the 
piano, before the singer 
begins. I also knew that 
you sing up or down 
according as the notes 
run up or down on the 
telegraph wires with 
which they print music. I knew, moreover, 
that the singer begins when the pianist 




64 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

commences to play "thump — thump, 
thump, — thump — thump, thump, etc." 
So when she played in that sort of a way I 
began, and I sang right through to the end. 
I would have been singing yet if she hadn't 
stopped playing, for I got so tangled up in 
that Sahara of notes, telegraph poles and 
wires that I had no idea where I was at. I 
did not get very much applause. And the 
fair, pale young girl went out of the room 
and had hysterics right alongside of my 
fainting wife. The rest of the women went 
to take care of her, and the men looked 
glum. I will say that Blake did his duty as 
a host, though. He said I had a tremend- 
ously strong voice. And I think he must 
be right, for they heard it up at the post- 
office, thought it was an alarm of fire and 
turned out with Old Red No. i and a gallon 
of whisky to put the fire out. When I 
heard this I went out and joined the brave 
firemen. I got home all right about one 
o'clock in the morning, and, as I expected, I 
found the little lady waiting for me with 
something to say on her mind. But I 
pointed to our sleeping child. 

"Would'st disturb her innocent slum- 
bers ? M I asked. She saw the point and we 
went peacefully to bed. By morning her 



I ADD TO AN EVENING'S AMUSEMENT. 65 

good nature had returned, and she passed 
it all off by merely laughing at me. That's 
the beauty of the little lady — and not the 
only kind of beauty she has, either. 







A BRILLIANT SCHEME. 

TF any man wants to make a fortune let 
1 him come to Milkville and be a washer- 
woman — that is, provided he can wash 
winter underclothes without shrinking 
them. There is only one woman in Milk- 
ville who will wash clothes, and she does 
not care a continental whether she shrinks 
or doesn't. She's not a shrinking old maid, 
by a long shot. She shrinks an ordinary 
suit of underwear just one size at a wash. 
If she gets hold of a particularly good suit 
she shrinks them just double that. It caused 
all the men in town a lot of trouble last year, 
but this year we worked a scheme on her 
that was worthy of a Talleyrand. As I am 
the largest man in town I wear a suit first. 
Then it is sent to the wash and when it 
comes back I turn it over to Job Hedson, 
who is the next largest man. He in turn 
sends it to the wash and turns it over to Sam 
Thompson, and so it goes though the village 
until it gets to little Bill Clarkson, the 
smallest man in town. After that it is 
turned over to the children, who wear it in 

[66] 



A BRILLIANT SCHEME. 67 

turn, according to size, and eventually it 
clothes the children's dolls. 

There are only two things wrong with 
this scheme. 

One is that little Bill Clarkson won't begin 
to wear his winter underclothes until next 
July, and the other is that I have to pay for 
all of them. But we don't any of us have to 
wear garments several sizes smaller than 
our skins. That's a comfort. 




IWcoIingCTheMs 

Hrt 



1 WRITE of an incident of midwinter vaca- 
tion. There are two youths of this town 
who are at present inhabiting temporarily 
larger or smaller portions of the ancient 
town of Cambridge, Mass. They are the 
sons of the two wealthiest men in Milkville 
and are attending Harvard College. Just 
now they are home on a visit. Naturally 
enough, Milkville is pretty small potatoes 
in their eyes, and the inhabitants thereof 
have but one use on earth, namely to be the 
butt of their jokes. We held an indignation 
meeting in our house one day during their 
visit and decided to either tar and feather 
these two youths or hang them to the near- 
est lamp-post. And we would have done it, 
too, had it not been for Puss. 

I will explain that Puss is a very pretty 
young lady who is visiting us. She is as 
nice as she is pretty and as clever as she is 

[68] 



THE FOOLING OF THE FOOLS. 69 

nice. And she lives in a town considerably 
larger than Cambridge. When Puss heard 
of our angry determination she begged us 
to let her try her hand at taming them, be- 
fore we resorted to such extreme measures. 
We agreed, and she asked, me to get up a 
straw ride and have a little supper at our 
house afterward. Of course, I agreed, and 
it was further ordered that a number of our 
neighbors who did not care to take the ride 
should meet us at the house on our return. 
Now these two youths were more than 
smitten with Puss, which was their only 
symptom of sanity. In fact, if they had 
been given the slightest encouragement 
they would have been tagging around after 
her all the time. But on the occasion of 
this straw ride they got their first encourage- 
ment. They both desired to be her cavalier 
and had a quarrel over the matter, which 
Puss eventually arranged by agreeing to 
give an arm to each of them. So on the 
ride they sat on either side of Puss, glared 
at each other and smiled soulfully on Puss. 
And the latter kept up an incessant giggling 
with both of them. I was rather disap- 
pointed at this. And I was madder than a 
wet hen when I discovered by the light of 
a bonfire at Curd Corners that one of them 
had his hand in Puss' muff. I was sitting 



JO THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

on the front seat with the driver and did not 
look around again. In fact I fear I swore a 
little — bitterly but softly — to myself. I 
did not know what Puss meant by such an 
action — and I prefer to attend to all such 
matters myself in my family. 

I found out, though, what Puss' scheme 
was when we alighted and strode up the 
walk to our front door. The door was open 
and the house was brilliantly lighted. The 
little lady was standing in the door and 
grouped around her were all our neighbors. 
They were all on the broad grin. Up we 
walked, headed by Puss and her two faith- 
ful cavaliers, and just as the latter got to the 
edge of the light that streamed from the 
front door Puss stepped suddenly back with 
a triumphant little burst of laughter, ex- 
posing our two youths each with a hand in 
her muff. They had been squeezing each 
other's hands for two mortal hours. It is 
hardly necessary to add that the young 
gentlemen from Harvard were suddenly 
called back to the ancient city of Cambridge, 
but not until the whole town had laughed 
them into humility. 

As for Puss, I could hug that girl — but 
I guess I'd better not. I don't want to get 
my hand into her muff. 




frf- 



THE SIXTH SENSE. 



1AM a great be- 
liever in the 
sixth sense, the 
subliminal cons- 
ciousness, as they 
call it. And I have 
become quite an 
adept, a n expert 
almost at reading 
thought. 

M y wife need 
not tell me that 
she is displeased 
with the letter I 
have received from 
one of my chumr, 
of the old Bohe- 
mian world that I 
have forsaken. 
There is anger in 
the air. I can tell 
the state of mind 
she is in by her 
very step upon the 
stair. And when 



[71] 



72 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

she enters with a pair of tongs in her hand, 
picks up the said letter in the said tongs and 
carries it away to be burned up I know 
just what she thinks, although she has not 
said a word. 

Yesterday I astonished a friend of mine 
by telling him that he had just taken a 
drink. That was mind reading for you. 
He had eaten a clove, so I could not possibly 
have smelled the alcohol on his breath. He 
regarded me with much awe and proposed 
having another. I did not accept because 
the little lady has a subliminal conscious- 
ness of her own. 

I had another proof of this wonderful 
power only yesterday. A friend of mine 
called, and I knew that he wanted to borrow 
money just by the way he turned his X rays 
on my pocketbook. Is it not truly wonder- 
ful and useful, too? In this case it enabled 
me to get a lie all ready for him and to de- 
liver it with utter sangfroid. I hate to tell 
a poor lie — a lame, halting apology for a lie 
that dare not hold its head up in the com- 
pany of any other respectable lie it may 
chance to meet. 

"Have I had any experience with thought 
reading at a distance? " you ask. Indeed 



THE SIXTH SENSE. 73 

I have, I know a man hundreds of miles 
from here whose bill I have not yet settled. 
I know that he is angry with me — quite 
angry. And yet I have had no communica- 
tion with him whatever; I have not even 
written to him. 






./rtf 







^/y Cooking Class. 



MY COOKING CLASS. 

T HAVE but one student in my cooking 
1 class. She would not attend if she did 
not have to. She is my wife. 

My mother was a superior cook as well as 
housekeeper and, of course, I absorbed a 
good deal of knowledge about cooking and 
housekeeping in my earlier years, from her. 
This I endeavor to impart to my wife from 
time to time to aid her in her own domestic 
economy. Do not imagine that I am a fault 
finder. Far from that, I call myself rather 
an improvement finder. My wife once said 
that it was truly wonderful what a number 
of things I could find in this world to im- 
prove. When I was courting her I used to 
wonder what she could find to love in me, 
but I know a number of things now. Now 
I merely ask "How could she help it? " 

I started my cooking class when we first 
began housekeeping and have kept it up 
ever since. I love to help the little lady, as 
she tries to improve her cooking, and find 
many opportunities to assist her by well 
directed criticism. There is no doubt about 

[75] 



j6 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

it; I am a born critic. If I ever conclude to 
seek steady employment it will be as a 
critic. 

I had an opportunity to give my wife a 
lesson in doing one's best under adverse 
circumstances the other day. There was 
something wrong with the stove, I believe, 
and the consequence was a very poor meal 
after a good deal of exceptionally hard work. 
I told her about a meal I cooked out West 
over a campfire. I had an uncle out in the 
Rockies, and there was a round-up of cattle 
at a point near his ranch. My uncle had 
agreed to provide the noonday meal for the 
fifty men who took part in it. My uncle 
never did things by halves. That was too 
large a fraction. He went in for eighths 
and sixteenths and that sort of thing. I was 
detailed by him to do the cooking. When 
the time came to cook I found that our single 
pack mule had been loaded with a sack of 
flour, a can of baking powder, a bag of tea 
and a teapot. Nothing to cook with but the 
tea pot. Nothing to eat but bread made 
without salt. Required a dinner for fifty 
men. I opened the flour sack and made an 
indention in the centre. Then I poured 
into it a small quantity of the baking powder. 
I sifted the baking powder around a little, 



MY COOKING CLASS. JJ 

poured in some water and mixed up some 
dough. The dough was too watery on 
one side and too floury on the other, but it 
had to go. Then I cut a sapling and peeled 
the bark off. That gave me a good, clean 
surface. I stuck the dough on the sapling, 
making a sort of cylindrical loaf. Then I 
held it over the fire and by constantly turn- 
ing it eventually got a small loaf of tasteless 
bread cooked. This I repeated many times. 
The fifty men came in detachments of ten to 
eat. Each man got a loaf of bread and they 
took turns drinking tea by means of the bak- 
ing powder can. 

I explained to my wife that that was all I 
needed to cook a meal for fifty men. I 
pointed out to her that there were but four 
in our family and that the baby was still a 
bottle baby. So she only had to cook for 
three. Then I left her to meditate. 

But she got even with me. She got me 
to promise to cook one meal for her. She 
agreed to get everything ready. When the 
meal was to be prepared I found that she 
had provided me with a sack of flour, a can 
of baking powder, some tea, a tea pot, and 
a fire in the back yard. I don't think that 
she meant to intimate that she did not be- 
lieve me. But after I had spoilt the flour, 



78 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

the baking powder, the tea and a suit of 
clothes, and nearly set the house on fire, I 
agreed to stop my cooking class if she would 
cook that meal. 



ELECTION BETS IN OUR TOWN. 

THHE minister was the only man in our 
1 town who did not bet on the election, 
and he wanted to. There was no money- 
put up. We haven't got much money out 
in the country, but we bet, nevertheless. 

Si Tompkins has rather the hardest time 
of it. He agreed to kiss his maid-of-all-work 
every day for three months if he lost. The 
maid said she would break his head for him 
if he ever tried. His wife heard of the affair 
and threatens to get a divorce if he does- 
And the maid's beau is going to shoot him 
on sight if he succeeds. Si has to treat eight 
Republicans every time he fails, and he has 
a hard winter before him. 

Our postmaster has agreed to stop reading 
postal cards before delivering them. But as 
he won't be postmaster long, in all proba- 
bility, he gets off easy. Ben Jackson has 
got to saw all of Peleg Smith's wood this 
winter. Dan Green has got to wear his pants 
hind side 'fore for three months. I have 
got to wheel the schoolma'am (he's a male 
schoolma'am) in a wheelbarrow three times 
daily around the village square, which will 
be rather hard on me when the snow is four 
feet deep. But the worst of it is I have got 

[79] 



80 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

to get up cold winter mornings and build 
the fires. I don't think the little lady made 
a square bet on that. If she hadn't bet she 
would have had to do it anyway, so she had 
nothing to lose and everything to gain. I 
am going to argue this point with her, and 
see if I can't work on her feelings. It's a 
cruel and unusual punishment, and as such 
is prohibited by the Constitution. 



EXPLAINING THINGS TO A SMALL BOY. 

HE is a trifle over three years old. That 
will explain the matter to a great many 
people who have had children. To others I 
will say that it usually proceeds like this, 
though many and various are the manifesta- 
tions of his curiosity. 

The Boy — Pop, why do I like to eat 
more than you do? 

Myself — Because you are growing more 
than I am. 

The Boy — Why am I growing more than 
you are? 

Myself — Because you are younger than 
I am. 

The Boy — Why am I younger than you 
are? 

Myself — O, let up. Go and play. 
(Silence for a few moments.) 

The Boy — Say, Pop, why do women 
wear different clothes from men? 

Myself — Because they have to. 

The Boy — Why — 

Myself — I thought you were going to 
play. 

6 [81] 



82 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

(Silence for a few more moments.) 

The Boy — Say, Pop, why can't we walk 
on our hands and feet like dogs and horses? 

Myself — I don't know. 

The Boy — Are dogs better than men? 

Myself — Very much — especially better 
than the grocer who has sent in his bill. 

The Boy — Does God like people better 
than he does dogs and horses? 

Myself — No. 

The Boy — Why not? 

Myself — O, go and ask marnma. 

The Boy — Mamma says you know lots 
more than than she does, and to ask you 
things. 

Myself — She does, eh? 

The Boy — Yes, sir. 

Myself — Well, I'll buy you five cents 
worth of candy if you'll go to mamma and 
ask her questions, one right after another, 
from now until supper-time. Do you think 
you can get up enough questions? 

The Boy {marching off on his errand of 
mercy) — Just as easy ! 

Myself {to myself) — I am temporarily 
saved, but he has a smart mother and I fear 
her next move. 







IS THIS IT? 

WILL somebody 
please tell me 
what "it" is? 

I am a parent to a 
small boy who is edu- 
cating himself. His 
method is the direct 
opposite of that us- 
ually followed in 
schools. Instead of 
answering questions 
he asks them. I pass 
(or fail to pass) an ex- 
amination at each 
meal. I usually fail. 

My present difficulty 
is with "it." That 
boy discovered the 
other day that "it" 
rains. That didn't 
bother him very 
much. But when "it" 
snowed a couple of 



84 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

weeks later, he wanted to know who that 
versatile individual "it" was. He had me, 

He became more mystified than ever 
when he learned that "it" hailed, that "it" 
froze, that "it" also thawed, and that "it" 
was time. Mystification grew into wonder 
when he found that "it" was day and also 
night, that "it" was moonlight and that "it" 
was noon. He gave up in despair when he 
discovered that "it" could grow warmer or 
colder. 

And I shall give up in despair unless 
some one reconstructs this English language 
of ours and abolishes "it" altogether. 




HOW I BEFRIENDED 
WILLIAM. 

WILLIAM, or Bill, 
as I prefer to 
call him, is a favorite 
of mine. He is a 
frank, honest-eyed, 
reckless, energetic 
youngster, who is al- 
ways getting into 
trouble. He has had 
more escapes from 
death than any other 
six boys in the town, 
and is either be- 
ing saved for 
some great 
use in the 
world, or 
to be a 
horrible 
example 
to his 
fellow- 
men. 



[85] 



86 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

His brother Clifford is quite a different 
boy. "Kulliford,"as his mother calls him, 
will some day be a bank cashier, and will 
depart hurriedly for Canada, in due course 
of time. If there is an open dare-devil 
piece of rascality committed in the neighbor- 
hood we know that Bill has been around. 
If there is a mean t sneaking trick played on 
somebody we are equally sure that "Kulli- 
ford" had one or more hands in it. Bill is 
always found out; "Kulliford" never is. 
The result is that Bill is lathered about once 
a day by his loving popper, and ' ' Kullif ord ' ' 
accumulates many merit cards in Sunday 
School, to the great enjoyment of the 
anointed. According to Bill, his popper has 
a cold and cruel way about him that makes 
matters all the worse. "William," his 
father says, just as the boy is about to eat 
a piece of cake at supper time, "you will go 
upstairs to bed immediately after supper. 
I will be up there to whip you after I have 
finished reading the paper." Thus is poor 
Bill robbed of the joy of eating and held in 
torture of suspense as well as lathered. 
Such punishments are cruel and unusual. 
They are, moreover, inflicted in the dark, 
and Bill does not get half a chance to dodge. 
And what is far worse, "Kullif ord," who 



HOW I BEFRIENDED WILLIAM. 87 

sleeps in the same bed with Bill, is per- 
mitted to enjoy his brother's discomfiture. 

The other day Bill came to me, as he 
often does, for sympathy. His brother had 
committed some high crime or misdemeanor 
and had convinced his mother that Bill was 
the culprit. That meant a lathering that 
evening, and an undeserved one too. I had 
been thinking over Bill's troubles and this 
time I was prepared to help him. 

"Bill," said I, "which side of the bed do 
you sleep on ? ' ' 

"On the side away from the wall," he 
answered, ruefully. "Pop makes me sleep 
there so he won't mistake Cliff for me in 
the dark." 

"All right," said I, "Now this time we'll 
fix Mr. Clifford. I'll invite your father over 
to play a game of chess this evening. That 
will make the lathering come late, after both 
you boys have gone to sleep. Now, after 
Clifford has gone to sleep you roll him ovei 
on to your side and get in his place." Bill 
gave me a silent pressure of the hand ancj. 
a grateful look that made me feel like a 
Talleyrand and a Chevalier Bayard made 
into one. The boys are about of the same 
size and their voices in moments of extreme 
pain and anguish are very similar. 



88 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

That night, after I had beaten their pop- 
per at chess and he had departed for home, 
I heard the wail of a lathered boy over in 
their house, with feelings of great joy. I 
delayed my departure for business the next 
morning in order to congratulate Bill. He 
came over early, as I expected, but he was 
a sorry looking sight. And he came over to 
get some arnica and vaseline. It seems that 
the scheme worked all right so far as getting 
Clifford duly punished was concerned. But 
the trick was discovered. Bill got about 
four times the lathering that Clifford did. 
The latter was presented with fifty cents by 
his father to cure his wounded feelings, and 
he had given the stable boy next door half 
of it to thrash Bill, which the stable boy did 
at break of day. Moreover, their mother 
was making a cake solely for Clifford, and 
Bill was to be punished that night for fight- 
ing with the stable boy. 

I have advised Bill to become a Sunday- 
school boy and a bank cashier, and I am 
going out of the Talleyrand-Bayard busi- 
ness. 



THE ROMANCE OF A DAY. 

SOME blooming idiot of a great man once 
said that if a man could write down all 
his experiences and thoughts of a single 
day, it would make the greatest romance 
ever written. I have had a few flings at 
romance in my time, and I thought I would 
try the old fellow's scheme yesterday. This 
is the result. 

Experience — Awoke to find it a dull, 
rainy day. 

Thought ! 

Experience — Was informed by my wife 
that it was wash-day. 

Tho UGHT ! ! ! 

Experience — Wash-day breakfast. 

Thought ! ! ! ■ ! ! 

Experience — Baby sick, go for doctor, 
stay home all day and take care of said baby, 
wife being busy watching washwoman. 

Thought ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 

Experience — Wife quarreled with wash- 
woman, discharged her, undertook to finish 
the job, had to help wife. 

Thought ! !! !!! !!!! 

t MM 

Experience — Quarreled with wife. 

[89] 



90 the little lady and myself. 
Thought ! !! !!! !!!1 

T MM f » M t ! 



Any experienced married party knows 
what the rest of the day was. 

Is there any romance in that? 

Can anyone discover any poetry floating 
through that record? 

Does it look like a song without words? 

Is it even second cousin to humor? 

No, it isn't even melodrama. 

The only description of art it resembles is 
the continuous performance. 




[9i] 



HOW CAP WENT TO 
THE WEDDING. 

T DON'T like to kick 
1 too often about 
things that go wrong, 
but there are times I've 
simply got to think out 
loud. This time it's 
about my yellow dog. 
His name is Cap, and 
he's a terrier both meta- 
phorically and literally. 
He hasn't a pedigree as 
long as that of a certain 
prince I could name; 
but he has a whole lot 
of manly human nature 
about him. He has his 
failings, but with all his 
faults I love him still. 

He did not cost me 
anything per se. My 
wife wanted to name 
him Percy on that ac- 



92 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

count, but when I recovered she apologized 
and offered to pay the doctor's bill out of 
her pin money. But he has cost me a whole 
lot, nevertheless. I have paid three times 
for every chicken that was ever raised in 
our town. In fact they have got to the point 
now where they import the decapitated parts 
of deceased fowls from other villages, bam- 
boozle Cap with a caress, stick some feathers 
to his chin whiskers with mucilage and 
come around and get fifty cents from me 
without having to borrow it. The last 
thing I paid for was a new pair of seventeen 
button white kid gloves. They belonged to 
a young lady friend of ours whom we call 
Puss, and now I've got to my story. 

A couple of our neighbors, male and fe- 
male, young and inexperienced, thought 
they would like to try the bicycle-built-for- 
two business, so they got married the other 
day. I had a sort of prescience that Cap 
considered himself included in the invita- 
tion. He went around most of the time 
with an amused squint in his left eye. So, 
ere we started, I locked him in the attic. I 
don't know how he got out and I don't want 
to know. It has kept me awake nights 
wondering for almost a week, and I am try- 
ing to get my mind off the subject. But my 



HOW CAP WENT TO THE WEDDING. 93 

wife and I were just looking our level best, 
and I was just beginning to think rather 
sentimentally of a similar experience we had 
gone through some years before, when Cap 
walked up the aisle inquiring for the usher. 
I cut him as he passed me. I've been 
ashamed of it since. I like to stick by my 
friends, and he has been a faithful friend to 
me. But there are times when I am weak 
and yield easily. Besides, I could see pretty 
Mrs. jJrown, across the aisle, biting her lip 
to keep from laughing, and I could tell by 
the snickering behind that the rest of them 
weren't even biting their lips. 

Not finding the usher (and the usher not 
being able to find him when he grabbed for 
him), Cap went right up on the stage. He 
sniffed disparagingly at the bride's train, 
took his pound of flesh out of the groom's 
ankle and coiled up on the superfluous part of 
the minister's robe. Here he would have 
remained, no doubt, and caused no further 
trouble, had it not been for the organist. 
Our organist likes Wagner. His ear has 
been educated up to it. My ear is becoming 
educated up to it. But Cap's ear is a hun- 
dred million years behind the times. He 
objects to Wagner and he objects eloquently. 
Possibly you may have met a dog in your 



94 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

experience that objected to music or loved 
it not wisely but too well. That was what 
happened. 

I thank Heaven and all the saints, how- 
ever, that my agony did not last as long as 
it might have. Cap got restless with the 
first strain from that fugue and he wandered 
within reach of pretty Puss. He had just 
begun his solo when she grabbed him and 
held his yellow jaws together till the end of 
the ceremony. Oh, I admire that girl ! 

He ruined her gloves, but I got her a new 
pair gladly. I would not kick at that, but 
the boys made me buy too many cigars and 
things for the safe preservation of the au- 
tonomy of my bank account, and ruin is 
staring me in the face. 

I have, however, mapped out a plan of 
action for the future. The next time two 
of our youngsters want to commit matri- 
mony I am going to take that dog up to the 
post-office and lock him in the postmaster's 
burglar proof safe and stand outside on 
guard with a shot gun, from the time the 
first bridesmaid begins doing up her hair till 
the last shoe is fired at the retreating 
victims. 



HOW I LEARNED TO RIDE THE BIKE. 

TTTHE only help I got in learning to ride 
1 the bike was from my wife. The little 
lady would grab hold of the framework just 
over the rear wheel and maintain my two 
hundred pounds of peerless manhood while 
I talked to her and told her what to do, and 
remonstrated with her for not doing what I 
thought she ought to do. I do not believe 
any one else could have helped me as much 
as she did. You see, I could hardly have 
talked as freely to any one else. 

The last time she helped me my conversa- 
tion ran something like this : 

' 'Now give me a good start. Hang on! 
Hold up ! Great Scott ! are you trying to 
run me into the ditch ! Jane, pay attention 
to what you're doing. You'll kill me. 
Don't let me wabble so. Look out, I'm 
running into a rock, can't you see I am? 
There ! I told you I would. It was all your 
fault. I should think you would have some 
sense by this time." 

I did not stop here, but I have to make a 
break in the report of my remarks to say 

[95] 



g6 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

that just here a young lady of whom I am 
rather fond, in a paternal sort of way, and 
whom I familiarly call ' ' Puss, ' ' rode up on 
her own wheel and went along with me, 
although some few yards away for safety's 
sake. I did not stop talking to the little 
lady, though. By this time I was too mad 
to care for appearances. So I turned to Puss 
and continued : 

"Did you ever see such a fool woman? 
Why can't she hold this blamed thing 
straight? Here I am wabbling around like 
a drunken man." 

Puss merely grinned and showed her 
pretty teeth, and gurgled a delightful little 
girlish laugh. That made me all the 
madder, and I began at my wife again. 

"Now, Jane, do use some sense. Hang 
on. Put some muscle in it. How would 
you like it if I let you skin around like this 
when you were learning. Look out ! Ouch ! 
I'm going over. No, I ain't. Yes, I am. 
Push ! Pull ! Move the blamed thing along. 
Stop her — stop her! Can't you see, you 
great — great — goose, that I'm running in 
to the fence? I'll be killed! My bicycle 
will be smashed to pieces. Stop me! I'm 
gone up ! O-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-h ! ' ' 

And crash ! bang ! I went into the fence, 



HOW I LEARNED TO RIDE THE BIKE. 97 

just as I had predicted. I picked myself 
up and, after an examination, found that no 
bones were broken. Then I examined my 
wheel and found that it was all right. Then 
I looked around to find my wife and give 
her a piece of my mind. There she was, 
three blocks up the street, just at the point 
where I had started, sitting on the curb- 
stone and laughing so loud I could hear 
every "Ha, ha! " And worse and more of 
it, Puss was immediately across the street, 
dismounted, and also sitting on the curb- 
stone and laughing just as hard. 

Then I saw it all. I had made the whole 
distance all alone by myself — and I had 
been talking, directing and protesting to the 
circumambient air. No wonder the girls 
laughed. But I forgave them. I had 
learned to ride the bike. 




How We Photographed the Baby, 



HOW WE PHOTOGRAPHED THE BABY. 

TT7HE photographer fastened the baby in a 
A suspicious-looking mechanism which he 
averred would hold the baby comfortably 
and at the same time be invisible (I could 
not help thinking what an admirable wife 
and mother such a machine would make), 
then stepped back and looked inside the 
camera to see if its insides were all right. 
Failing to discover a fit of indigestion or 
other weakness in the machine he shook him- 
self free from the mantle of cloth, stepped 
to one side, ran his fingers through his 
hair, grabbed the rubber vermiform appen- 
dix that opens the eye of the instrument and 
remarked in a weary sort of way, as though 
he anticipated a struggle : ' ' Now look pleas- 
ant, please." 

I gazed at him pityingly. No need to ask 
that man whether he was married and the 
father of children. 

" You don't suppose that baby understands 
such language as that, do you?" said my 
wife witheringly. 

* ' I always thought I spoke fairly good Eng- 
[99] 



IOO THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

lish," the photographer answered. "How- 
ever, perhaps the baby will understand you 
better." 

"Well, I should hope so," answered the 
little lady. Then she smiled upon our infant 
and said: "Didn't its cutesy wootsey litley 
bitsey soulsum moulsum want to smilesy 
wilesy sumsum wumsum for its momsum 
womsum ? ' ' 

Our heir apparent gave one look of dis- 
gust, curled the northeast corner of her 
mouth up into her southwest ear, closed her 
eyes, turned red and yelled bloody murder 
in choicest baby talk. 

"Doesn't seem to work any better than 
mine, does it? " said the photographer with 
a sneer. 

"Humph!" ejaculated the little lady. 
"She's afraid of you — and no wonder." 

Then the photographer tried again. He 
put a pet cat on top of the camera and a 
canary bird on the chair beside it. Then he 
stirred up a sleepy monkey that reposed in 
a corner, wound up a mechanical bug and 
started it across the floor, tooted on a tin 
horn, and danced a jig. No use. The baby 
simply looked more disgusted still, and 
yelled the louder. 

Then the little lady sang a song, but with- 



HOW WE PHOTOGRAPHED THE BABY. IOI 

out effect. Perceiving that a variety show 
was in order I took a turn then, and rendered 
my inimitable imitation of a man trying to 
recite a poem. Then the photographer per- 
formed some clever juggling tricks, the most 
wonderful of which was extracting two dol- 
lars on account from my own pocket (I had 
hoped to get the photographs charged), and 
the little lady followed with "Curfew Shall 
Not Ring To-night." On this I made an 
impromptu parody entitled "Baby Will Not 
Smile To-day," and then the little lady sug- 
gested that we give her the legitimate. We 
did. First we gave the dagger scene from 
"Macbeth," then the sword scene from 
"Richard III." We closed with Antony's 
oration, with the little lady as Antony, my- 
self as the populace, and the photographer 
as the corpse. He said he felt like one. 
The baby "lent us her ears" all right, but 
look pleasant she would not. Every alterna- 
tive having failed, I at length resolved upon 
what I call my "last resort." I got down 
on my hands and knees and let the youngster 
toy with my hair and mustache. And then 
she smiled. 

Our friends say it is a splendid picture of 
the baby, but an awfully poor one of me. 




OLICY 



AN insurance agent dropped in upon us 
one day last week and I fell. I have 
been tempted before and resisted, but I am 
getting weak in my old age and am begin- 
ning to yield easily. 

" Think of them/' said the wily agent, 
pointing to my wife and youngsters, who 
entered the room at this inopportune mo- 
ment. I was thinking of them that morning 
and wondering how I was going to keep a 
roof over their heads, for the rent was due, 
and I was figuring out where I could "bor- 
row the price,' ' to use an expression that 
will be understood in New York. Then 
reason got to work on me. When reason 
gets hold of me I am gone. I am not logical 
enough to battle with it. 

[102] 



MY INSURANCE POLICY. 103 

"Of what use will be a mere roof," argued 
Reason, "should you die? They have got 
to have something to eat and something to 
wear, and it is dour duty to provide. Be- 
sides, you might just as well borrow $200 
as $50," 

"Oh," said I, making a last futile effort, 
"my wife is so good looking she'll have no 
difficulty in marrying again in case I die." 
At which the little lady looked at me so re- 
proachfully and whisked out of the room so 
angrily that I was smitten unto the heart. 
The agent saw my condition and knew that 
I was his prey. 

"I have seven hundred and eighty-four 
different schemes of in- 
surance and you can take 
your choice," said he. 

I coaxed the little lady 
back into the room, and 
she and I and the agent 
spent the rest of the day 
talking over the matter. 
As a result, when the 
shades of even fell upon 
our domicile and the 
agent had gone up to 
the tavern to get a drink, 
I held in my hand the 




104 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

Mutual Love Company's policy number 
131,313,131,313, on my life, and was wonder- 
ing how soon I was going to die. 

It was a queer policy, and about the only 
thing I was certain of under it was that 
some day I would die and on that same day 
the little lady and the youngsters would get 
something ranging from a capital prize of 
$10,000 cash down to funeral expenses, which 
should include a handsome casket with 
nickel-plated trimmings, a M Gates Ajar" 
made out of immortelles, and a pillow of 
flowers on which should appear the legend 
"Here He Lies/' My wife did not exactly 
like that legend, but I assured her that all 
my friends and acquaintances would think it 
appropriate, so it was adopted, with the 
proviso that it could be changed in case I 
was blown into minute atoms by some ex- 
plosion and the services were held by proxy, 
as it were. 

The capital prize of $10,000 was to be paid 
in case I died decently in my bed at an ad- 
vanced age. Kind as the insurance com- 
panies are. I learn that they have to make a 
fortune or two out of what one pays in 
before they are willing to give very much 
back. 

The minimum prize is to be paid in case 



MY INSURANCE POLICY. 10$ 

of death within one year by accident and in 
case I am guilty of contributory neglect. 

If I am killed on a railroad train or trolley 
car my widow is to receive $5,000 cash and 
$10 per week all the rest of her life. If, 
however, I am killed on a New York cable 
car she is to receive nothing, but is to pay 
the insurance company $10,000 as liquidated 
damages for insuring a born fool. 

If I am blown up by dynamite or dropped 
down by an office-building elevator she is to 
receive $2,000 cash, a cottage and lot in New 
Jersey (poor girl), $3 a week, and 100 two- 
cent stamps, $1 50 credit at a grocer's, a black 
dress, a white skirt, one and a half pairs of 
gloves, a suit of underclothes and a pair of 
corsets per year. 

If I am slain by my fellow-man or gored 
to death by a bull she is to receive the same 
as above except that the cottage and lot is 
to be on Long Island instead of New Jersey, 
md she is to receive shoes instead of gloves. 
I do not know which is the more fun, but of 
the two I prefer the man or bull to the dyna- 
mite or elevator — as in the case of the man 
or bull the little lady will only have to go 
barehanded, whereas in the case of the dyna- 
mite or elevator she will have to go bare- 
footed. 



106 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

If I slip on a banana peel or am butted to 
death by a goat she is to receive $4,000, and 
board for herself and family in a Brooklyn 
boarding-house. 

If I die of cirrhosis of the liver she is to 
receive the capital prize and a membership 
in Sorosis. And if I die of appendicitis she 
is to move to Chicago. 

There are several other "ifs" in this 
polic) r of mine, but I will not relate any 
more of them. We are trying to keep some 
things in our family secret. 

But this insurance policy of mine has 
changed our family life very greatly. I 
hardly dare stir out of the house any more, 
and when I do the little lady's brow becomes 
clouded with care and anxiety. I am think- 
ing of joining the church. 




HEN pretty 
Puss came to 
visit us a couple of 
weeks ago she was 
just beginning to 
learn to ride a 
wheel. She looked 
stunning in her 
dark green riding 
habit, and I had 
great sport helping 
her to hang on. 
The slender waist was hers, but the arm 
around it was mine, you know, and I enjoyed 
it immensely. But we did not make much 
progress, and as my wife was beginning to 
get jealous I eventually had to invite a 
young man around to teach Puss. 

I picked out the homeliest gawk among 
the wheelmen of the town, but that invita- 
tion was a signal to every blooming bachelor 
that rode a wheel within ten miles of our 

[107] 



~*&P^ 



108 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

house to come around and help. I have 
since learned that the young scamps of to- 
day keep tab on every girl who learns to 
ride and swarm around her. It seems that 
there is no fun riding with a girl after she 
has learned to ride. The pleasurable excite- 
ment comes in when you have to hold her 
on the wheel, and whisper words of burning 
encouragement and direction into her pink 
little shell-like ear. 

It made me very tired when I discovered 
what sort of a game these young men were 
working. I spoke to the little lady about the 
matter and offered to resume Puss' instruc- 
tion exclusively, but she told me that Puss 
preferred the young unmarried men, and 
plenty of them, to one homely old curmud- 
geon of a married man like me. 

Well, matters went from bad to worse, 
and before long we had more than fifty 
young men hanging around our front steps 
every evening, smoking vile cigarettes, 
while they waited their turn at Puss' waist. 

I had to lie awake nights to devise a scheme 
to get even with those young men. But I 
have quite an intellect when once it gets to 
work, and eventually I hit upon a plan that 
was at once cheap and efficacious. I pur- 
chased a small brad awl — one so small that 



I GET EVEN WITH THE BOYS. 109 

I could easily hide it in the palm of my 
hand. With this I punched a hole every 
evening in the tire of one of Puss* wheels. 
The first youth who arrived after supper of 
course had to patch the wheel up and pump 
it full of air. During this interesting pro- 
cess I helped by holding the other wheel — 
and incidentally punched a hole in that one. 
Then the young man would have to take a 
turn repairing that. As he did so I punched 
another hole in the first wheel. 

In this manner, in the course of a couple 
of weeks, I wore out the patience of fifty- 
five young men, seven married men, four 
grandfathers, two physicians and a doctor of 
divinity. I now have Puss all to myself, 
and she is learning to ride rapidly. I had 
to buy her some new tires, but that didn't 
matter. Like all newspaper men and 
writers, I am rich. 




ER 



1 



OBSERVA- 
TIONS. 

GOT inter- 
e s t e d in 
astronomy not 
long ago and 
bought a good- 
sized telescope which 
I mounted in the cupola 
of our house, and for several 
weeks interested myself making 
observations of the star-spangled 
heavens. In the course of time I got 
tired of this pastime, however, and 
one evening after I had announced 
that I would make no more observa- 
tions, my wife said she would go up 
and make a few observations on her 
own account. 
She had been up on the roof rather more 
than an hour, I fancy, when she came down- 
stairs, her face radiant with success. 



HER OBSERVATIONS. 1 1 1 

"Well," I asked, "did you make any ob- 
servations? " 

"Did I ?" she replied. "Well, I should 
guess." 

"I suppose you have made some important 
disco veries," I suggested sarcastically. 

"That's just what I have," said she. 

"For instance? " I queried. 

"Well, Mr. and Mrs. Brown are having an 
awful row in their dining room." 

So that was her way of making observa- 
tions, was it? 

"Anything else? " I asked. 

"Yes, Jack Barnstable is out walking with 
that horrid grass widow Tompkins (you 
need never invite him here again); Milly 
Jones must be engaged to Charley Oliver, 
for they are sitting on her back porch and 
he has his arm around her waist and is kiss- 
ing her;" (they live at. the other end of 
town) "old Mr. Skinflint is cutting the 
grass on his lawn to save twenty-five cents 
and doing it in the dark so that no one will 
see him ; Mary Marks went down to the post- 
office and met Joe Harris there and went to 
walk with him, although her father has for- 
bidden her having anything to do with him ; 
Mrs. Black's washing is still out and it is 
going to rain; the Swifts have gone over 



112 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

to the Bakers' and are playing cards, 
although Mrs. Swift told me only yester- 
day that she would never speak to Mrs. 
Baker again, and — " 

But I did not listen further. 

I have come to the conclusion that a 
woman is practical in everything. 



HOW I DIDNT SETTLE IT. 

TITHE Women Suffragists of our town were 
1 calling on my wife, so I got out of the 
way. I couldn't help overhearing more or 
less of what they said, however, and if all 
things they said about men are true I am 
heartily ashamed of my sex. Positively, I 
am going to stop associating with the men 
and trot solely with the girls. 

If the women can't vote merely because 
the men won't let them I think it is down- 
right mean. My wife takes the right view 
of the situation. She says the women ought 
to make the men grant them equal rights. 
And as every man in the world is under the 
thumb of some woman, with a good many 
women's thumbs to spare (according to sta- 
tistics) it seems to me it would be simple 
enough to do this. 

The little lady has a plan for changing the 
wording of the Constitution which I think 
is a good one. The Constitution, according 
to her (I didn't tell her it was the Declara- 
tion of Independence), declares that all men 
are born free and equal. She would move 
8 [113] 



114 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

to amend this by inserting the word* ' babies' ' 
for "men." In the first place, as men are 
babies when they are born it is more appro- 
priate, and in the second place it makes no 
distinction regarding sex. ' ' All babies are 
born free and equal." How is that for a 
patriotic period? 

Well, the little lady declared to those 
women that she knew I would vote for 
woman suffrage, and that if I did not she 
wouldn't live with me. So they called me 
in to see if she was right. 

I made the hit of my life with those 
women. "Ladies," said I, "most certainly 
do I believe that the freeman's suffrage 
should be extended to the gentler sex. 
Every woman should be permitted to vote, 
twice — once on each ticket. By this means 
the women will be satisfied, as they will 
have exercised the royal right of voting. 
In fact, they will be more than satisfied, as 
they will be sure to have voted for the win- 
ning ticket. And finally, they will not have 
interfered with the decision made by the 
men." 

What woman can find fault with that 
proposition? 

But the little lady hasn't spoken to me 
since for some reason or other. 



AN EFFORT AT ECONOMY. 

WE had a fit of economy last week — only- 
it didn't fit very well. We needed 
some coal, and the little lady bought nearly 
a ton, at half price, from some neighbors 
who were going to move. Then the ques- 
tion arose as to how we were going to move 
it over to our house. Finally we concluded 
to borrow a horse and wagon from a neigh- 
bor and cart it over in that. I was to do the 
shoveling and carting evenings, when I was 
resting. 

I nearly broke my back loading that 
wagon with coal the first time. I need not 
say the first time, though, for I never loaded 
it again. The horse ran away the very first 
time I said << G , lang ,> to him. He scattered 
the coal from Milkville to Curd Corners, and 
he wiped up parts of three New York 
counties with me. 

That effort at economy cost me just $78 
when I had paid all the damages. 

I am taking lessons in elocution now. 
You should hear my imitation of a man 
swearing. 

[us] 



WILL YER? 

T WAS making a tour of the Bowery in the 
1 company of a friend. We were both 
looking for local color. We stopped at a 
typical Bowery saloon and had a drink. 
We still live. However, we had our lives 
insured, so it would have made no differ- 
ence. As we turned, a hulking loafer made 
toward us with an impudent grin on his face. 
"Say, boss," said he, "gimme a quarter, 
will yer? M 

We paid no attention to him, and went 
out. He followed us. On the sidewalk he 
approached again. "Look here, young fel- 
lers," he said, as he came up behind, "if 
yer don't give me a quarter I'll f oiler yer 
all over town. ' ' 

"If you follow me a block," I answered 
him, as gruffly as I could, "I'll have you 
arrested. ' ' 

"Will yer?" said he. 

We journeyed up town and stopped in 
various places — to get some local color. 
There are people who call it inspiration, 

[116] 



WILL YER? 117 

but I call it local color. He followed us, 
true to his word. Finally I warned him 
again. I pointed out a policeman and told 
him I would turn him over to the officer. 

"Will yer?" said he. 

We crossed town to Broadway. It was a 
long and a dark walk. I hoped we had 
shaken him off, but, as we turned up the 
street, I saw him not a quarter of a block 
behind. I was beginning to feel annoyed. 

"Let him follow/ ' said my friend. "I 
know the policeman on the next beat. 
We'll give him a scare." 

We met the policeman, as my friend had 
anticipated. 

"Lave him to me," said the copper. We 
laved him. But we turned around to see the 
fun. Our defender caught him by the scruff 
of the neck, shook him, kicked him a couple 
of dozen times, threw him half way across 
the street and chased him a block or so 
across town. We congratulated ourselves 
and went on our way. 

' ' If that fellow ever crosses 1^ pathway 
again," said I, "I'll have him locked up for 
sure." 

"Will yer? " said a familiar voice at my 
elbow. It was our hulking enemy. 

"Look here," I cried angrily, "if you fol- 



Il8 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

low me another step I'll break this cane over 
your head." 

"Will yer? M said he with a sneer. 

I raised my arm and struck him over the 
shoulders a terrific blow. He squirmed, 
but all he said was "Will yer? M 

"Let that be a lesson to you," I said. 
"Next time I'll hit you on the head, as sure 
as I'm standing here." 

"Will yer?" said he. 

Human endurance will stand just so much. 
That settled it. I — gave him the quarter, 
and invited him into a place where they sell 
local color and treated him. Then he 
left us. 



OUR MINISTER'S PRESENT. 

0UR town of Milkville comes nearer to 
having the meanest man alive than any 
other town, hamlet or Ophelia on this un- 
fortunate earth. I will call him Smith, 
because his name is not Smith, and by mak- 
ing that statement I shall work myself into 
the good graces of a large and growing 
portion of our population. 

Smith proposed a collection for the minis- 
ter's Christmas present. As mover of the 
proposition he was of course made chairman 
of the committee and appointed his wife 
treasurer. Then all the women in town 
went to work and begged of all the other 
women contributions to the fund and turned 
over their collections to Mrs. Smith. In this 
way my wife was enabled to contribute five 
separate times. She put her name down on 
the list of every woman who had done like- 
wise for her until I stopped her. There are 
some sixty women in the town, and as near 
as I can figure out the facts every one of 
them kept contributing to different lists 
until their husbands stopped them. You 

[119] 



120 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

see that was part of Smith's scheme. And 
before he was through he had most of the 
money in town, and wouldn't tell how much 
he had because he said he was afraid of 
burglars. He said he would spend all the 
money, however, for a beeyoutiful piano 
lamp, and that the ladies could take it over 
to the minister on Christmas Eve. 

You've probably seen, in the course of 
your long and otherwise upright career, the 
advertisement of certain firms that give 
you a box containing seventy kinds of soap, 
sufficient to last you for a year — thirty-five 
that you can use and thirty-five that are 
only fit to give to the poor, with a piano 
lamp thrown in (the piano lamp for yourself, 
of course, and not the poor). Well, Smith 
had bought one of those boxes of soap, and 
he sold the piano lamp to himself as chair- 
man for the hundred odd dollars the women 
collected. And that was the present those 
women took down to the minister last 
Christmas Eve. 

Of course the women did not know any- 
thing about it, but the minister's wife is 
pretty well up in the ways of the world, 
and when the spokesman of these fool 
women had made her address, the minister's 
wife answered for him (he was, of course, 



OUR MINISTER'S PRESENT. 121 

overcome with emotion, as is proper on such 
occasions) : 

"We thank you very much," said the 
minister's wife. "Now we shall have two 
piano lamps just alike. You see, we bought 
one of those boxes of soap, too. 

When the situation dawned on my little 
lady's mind she said she could have gone 
straight through the floor to China. 

The women have made Smith resign as 
Superintendent of the Sunday School and 
the men are talking of lynching him. But, 
like all mean men, he will probably escape. 



ON THE LOSS OF MY CLOTHES. 

1WAS very much delighted the other day 
when the little lady informed me that 
our youngster was clothed for the winter. 
I had put by a little money for that pur- 
pose, and now it seemed that that was all 
velvet. Personally I had concluded to wear 
old clothes this year. I was going to tell 
the boys that I had agreed to do so in case 
Bryan lost. But now I could blow in a little 
on myself. That relieved me of telling one 
lie, and gave me a glorious opportunity to 
tell another, i. e. y that I had won quite a 
little sum on McKinley's election. 

Before proceeding to invest I went 
through my wardrobe to see what I needed 
most. 

The little lady had been before me, how- 
ever, in going through that wardrobe. It 
was deceased. There were sufficient re- 
mains, however, upon which to investigate, 
and I held an inquest. 

The little lady was first witness. Our 
boy was her exhibit. My last winter's best 
suit had been manufactured over into a best 
suit for him, including an extra pair of 
pants. Ditto with the second best suit. 
My evening clothes (which she explained I 

[122] 



ON THE LOSS OF MY CLOTHES. 1 23 

would not need any more) made a beautiful 
Sunday suit for him, and she had made over 
my Prince Albert into a jacket for herself. 
My overcoat had been made over into an 
ulster for the boy, and my winter under- 
clothes were just sufficient to fit him out in 
that line. I had left for my own use a plug 
hat, a vest and a couple of pairs of socks, 
also a kid glove (left hand). According to 
the law of nations that is not sufficient 
raiment for a citizen of these United States, 
and I have either got to blow in my princely 
fortune of $43.74 on new clothes or go to 
jail or the bath room. 

The little lady was so proud of her ac- 
complishment that I would have been a 
brute to complain. So I complimented her, 
kissed her and spent the rest of the day 
wondering whether I could get credit at my 
tailor's. 

A little more such economy and I am 
undone. 



AN EXPERIENCE WITH INTUITION. 

LOVELY woman, God bless her! is one of 
the strangest of God's creatures. She 
is not as strange as man, perhaps, but pretty 
near it. By many she is considered man's 
superior, and with no false modesty she con- 
siders herself to be such. The majority of 
men acquire a taste for her sooner or later. 
It seems that she is first endured, then pitied, 
then embraced. 

The most peculiar thing about woman 
(barring a few hundred others that are more 
peculiar) is her sense of intuition. She 
knows things without having read them or 
been told them. She does not even guess 
them. She simply knows them. She can 
read a whole volume between the lines of a 
letter. My wife can take an ordinary letter 
from one of her friends and tell just what 
time it was written, just what the writer 
wore at the time (especially whether the 
dress was new or old, etc.), and many other 
things. Talk about mind reading! Why, 
letter reading by a woman of good intelli- 
gence is ten times as mysterious. The aver- 

[124] 



AN EXPERIENCE WITH INTUITION. 1 25 

age woman regards the written words of a 
letter as absolutely superfluous. In fact, it 
was my wife's ability to read between the 
lines that got me into this trouble. I will 
proceed to explain : 

I was traveling with a party of friends 
from St. Paul to Chicago on my way home. 
Now I am very popular, as I lose readily at 
poker, and the boys wanted me to stay over 
a few days at Chicago before I journeyed on 
to New York. They argued that they had 
not seen me for a long time and would like 
to again. My recollections of the many 
times they had "seen" me in the dear dead 
past were only too vivid. I didn't want to 
go home broke and so I concocted a scheme 
to thwart them. 

I promised the boys that I would stay 
over with them in Chicago provided I did 
not get a telegram when we arrived there 
urging my immediate presence in New 
York. They agreed to this, and I slipped 
away from them quietly at Milwaukee and 
sent the following telegram to my wife : 

"Wire me be home Friday without fail." 

Now my wife received that telegram and 
went to work to study it out. It was a trifle 
difficult for her to read between the lines, 
she explained to me afterward, as there was 



126 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

but one line. Moreover, the telegram was 
on paper that was absolutely lacking in any 
of my characteristics and the writing was 
not mine, but the telegraph operator's. She 
(Jid her best, however, and supplied such 
words as she thought would be correct. 

When we reached Chicago we went 
directly to the hotel, and as I registered the 
clerk handed me a telegram that had just 
arrived for me. I exulted. The boys 
crowded around to hear whether I could 
stay or not, and one of them even went so 
far in his excitement as to take the telegram 
from me and read it out aloud. This is 
what he read : 

"Of course I will be home Friday." 
She had twisted that telegram into "Wire 
me will you be home Friday without fail; " 
and I remained in Chicago until the boys 
had seen enough of me to buy each of their 
wives a new silk dress. 



HAROLD'S POEM. 

HAROLD is a friend of ours. Or, per- 
haps, it would be just as well for me to 
say that we are friends of Harold's. It has 
never seemed to us that Harold was a friend 
of ours since the day he killed our cat with 
a nigger-shooter and tied a tin pail to our 
dog's tail to make a Roman holiday. But 
we're friends of Harold's because his mother 
is a very sweet little widow who is trying 
to live and bring up a young-man boy or a 
young-boy man (whichever you happen to 
call them) at the same time. Harold, by the 
way, is at college. 

The dear soul (I mean his mother, of 
course) dropped in to see us the other night. 
She was radiant. Harold had joined a secret 
society for mutual improvement. As it was 
a secret society she did not know very much 
about it, of course. She would not have 
Harold betray secrets for the world. She 
wanted him to be a pure, upright, noble 
man. Therefore she had not asked him any 
questions about it. He was also writing 
poetry. She was glad of that. Oh, if 

[127] 



128 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

Harold could only be a poet ! I joined her 
fervently in this wish. We could then have 
a legal excuse for killing him. 

Well, a day or two later, I received a 
letter from Harold. The important part 
of it ran something like this: 

"Say, I'm High-Muck -a-Muck of a Shin- 
dig we've started, and we've got to have 
some rites. I had to get up a song as my 
share of the rites, and before I submit it to 
the committee I want to try it on the dog. 
What I mean is, 1 want you to look it over 
and see if it will do, and suggest improve- 
ments here and there. I'll do the same for 
you some day. I enclose copy." 

Here is Harold's song. It is evidently a 

DRINKING SONG. 

Before we sup, fill up the cup 

And toast the maiden divine, 
Who mixed her tears and blushes up, 

And so invented wine. 

Chorus — 

All around the table, boys, 

And give 'em cheer on cheer, 
Till they think the tower of Babel, boys, 

Is being built in here. 

She kissed the brim to him, to him 

Who had his arm around her; 
He drank until the stars grew dim — 

His thirst it did astound her. 



HAROLD'S POEM. 129 

Chorus — All around, etc. 

The horn, the horn she filled till morn, 

And stirred it up with laughter; 
That maid invented wine, I've sworn — 

I'll give the date hereafter. 

Chorus — All around, etc. 

I did not make any criticisms. But I have 
induced his mother to take Harold from 
college. And if the neighbors do not hang 
him before the winter is over, the Superin- 
tendent of the Sunday School and I are going 
to try to reform him. If we fail in that, 
however, we have determined to prosecute 
him for poetry in the first degree. 
9 



MY MARE. 

1HAVE just bought a mare. 
Ten families live in our village, and six 
of them keep hcrses. The various members 
x families have said nothing about 
the mare as yet. for they know I can pass 
of them going to church (going around 
:he church, I mean, of course), or going 
• litre else. But the amount of horse 
wisdom possessed by the heads, tails and 
bodies of the families that do not keep horses 
passes belief. Jones is one of them. He 
ps a cow. He told me that a cow would 
have been a better investment. He said a 
horse wouldn't give me any milk for the 
y (we are going to buy a pig and name it 
ItI^-Io — we have the baby, bat we have 
not yet decided on the name for it). Jones 
merely had to look at the mare to decide 
that she kicked, bit and balked. He said he 
wouldn't trust his family with her across 
the street. As the street in front of his 
house extends to the Pacific Ocean, and for 
that matter, to Japan, in real dry weather, 
I don't blame him for his lack of confidence. 

[130] 



MY MARE. 131 

Brown rides a bicycle (or a bike, rather — 
I believe the word " bicycle' ' is labeled ob- 
solete in the latest dictionary). Brown is 
young, but he saw a horse once, and he had 
no trouble in deciding at a glance that the 
mare had a pin hip, several spavins and the 
lampers. He said, sententiously (you must 
always use the word sententiously when 
writing for publication nowadays — either 
that or tentatively, but I can't work in tenta- 
tively here), that it did not cost anything to 
feed a bike. You may observe that this re- 
mark of Brown's and that of Jones' about 
the milk were startingly original thoughts. 

Smith, who is a famous pedestrian, was a 
little more considerate. He said the only 
thing that was the matter with the mare 
was the glanders. I'm rather sorry about 
that, though, for he says the glanders is an 
incurable disease, and I find that he has told 
the truth, according to the ten-dollar horse 
doctor book that I have just bought. 

The remark that Robinson made about 
her, however, I really do not understand. 
He remarked (sententiously also) that the 
mare would eat her head off inside of a 
month. Since he said that I have never 
gone to the stable without expecting to see 
a headless horse standing in the stall. And 



132 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

the worst of it is that I can find no reference 
in the horse doctor book to equine fclo de se. 
I have a place picked out for her grave, 
though, in case she does decapitate herself. 
It is in the Robinson family lot. 



PAINTING OUR HOUSE. 

1WAS informed by every one in our vil- 
lage that our landlord was a man of his 
word and would do just what he agreed to, 
so when I got him to agree to paint our 
house and surroundings, I thought I had a 
pretty good bargain. ' ' I'll paint everything 
around the place that you want me to," said 
he, with a suave smile that was only slightly 
marred by his prodigious chew of tobacco. 
That was where I got left. I should have 
made him agree to paint the colors that I 
desired. Unfortunately our tastes do not 
agree, and that house looks like a chromatic 
aberration of a nocturne by Whistler. 
When I argued with him, he merely said 
that he was painting it the color that it 
ought to be. Finally I asked him what 
color the leaves of the trees around the place 
ought to be. ' ' Green, ' ' said he, "asa matter 
of course." I have him now painting the 
autumn leaves green, as fast as they turn. 
I am ahead of one landlord anyway. 

[133] 



OUR MOTTO. 



VJeWotil 





<I ASKED my wife 
1 to -day if she was 
happy, and she said 
she would be if I 
would get shaved 
and throw away my 
corncob pipe. I pro- 
mised to do both, 
and I will. Of course my 
beard will grow again, and I 
shall buy a new pipe, but 
that will only give me an- 
other opportunity to make 
her completely happy. You 
will observe that the things 
that cause unhappiness are 
the very ones that give us 
the opportunity to create 
happiness. Hence, blessed 
are the things that cause un- 
happiness ! 

I write this for the benefit 
of young married people. 
There are people who believe 
[134] 



OUR MOTTO. 135 

that I write for the publisher's check that 
my writings occasionally bring me — a 
check, I may say, that is deftly arranged so 
that I cannot raise it the millionth part of a 
mill, and bears autographs that I cannot 
decipher, much less forge. On the con- 
trary, I write for the edification of those 
who have been married just long enough to 
discover that matrimony is not "one grand, 
sweet song/' and that they are separate 
human entities, just a wee bit inclined to 
scrap once in a while. The adjustment that 
takes place at this period of wedded life is 
what makes or mars a marriage. Now stop 
eating peanuts and listen. 

No one would imagine that my wife and I 
ever had any differences. But we did at 
one period of our lives. Nothing serious, 
you know, just a friendly bout of an even- 
ing. But they began to worry us, and after 
one that was a trifle more serious than the 
others (it was about having the dog's ears 
cropped, or something as important), we 
made up our minds that we simply wouldn't 
quarrel any more. But how were we to 
arrange it so that we wouldn't? Neither of 
us had any memory worth speaking of, and 
we had to have some visible means of sup- 
port in our determination. Finally, we hit 



136 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

upon the plan of hanging up a motto that 
would remind us. Then, when either felt 
the least bit obstreperous, the other could 
point to the motto and all would be well. 
Of course it wouldn't do to choose any- 
thing that would be understood by a third 
party, so we adopted the simple words, "WE 
WON'T/' had them executed in Gothic 
architecture, framed them and hung them 
on the wall. I grieve to say that we quar- 
reled as to where to hang our motto, but 
since the day it was hung peace has reigned 
in our family. 

We had no idea when we put it up how 
valuable that motto was going to be to us in 
other waj's. In the first place it became a 
neighborhood mystery. Every one tried to 
find out what it meant, but of course we 
couldn't explain. People who had never 
called on us before called now just to see the 
motto. In this way it worked us into the 
best society in town. The effect on book 
agents and peddlers was marvelous. We 
always treat such people politely, for we 
have been poor ourselves — that is, poorer 
than we are. But we seat them in front of 
that motto and watch them try to talk. 
They go out of their own accord and usually 
forget their samples. And it has a similar 



OUR MOTTO. 137 

effect on charitably inclined ladies who come 
around begging us to subscribe to African 
missions and that sort of thing. Even the 
grocer fell under its influence. He came 
around one evening to try to get us to pay 
our bill, looked at the motto, sighed, gave 
me a cigar, went out and has never bothered 
us since. 

In fact, young people, if you want to be 
happy, though married, adopt our motto 
and hang it on your wall. 



A COMMUNICATION. 

MR. EDITOR: 
I wish to know why it is that so many- 
people want to know something or other 
about the art of dressing, and no one in your 
valued columns ever asks anything about 
the art of undressing. Is it moral cow- 
ardice? If so, I wish to prove myself a brave 
man right here and now. I am going to ask 
the questions for the benefit of mankind 
and I am going to sign myself " Old Sub- 
scriber/' "Constant Reader," "Veritas" 
and all the rest of them, but I shall not go 
so far as to sign myself Willie Simpkins of 
West 24th street, which is my true name 
(the first part of it). 

First. I want to know how to get a num- 
ber five hat off a number seven head at four 
o'clock of a Sunday morning, after a pleas- 
ant and enjoyable evening with a college 
chum. 

Second. I want .to know how to get off a 
pair of new patent leather shoes and silk 
stockings at 4:10 a. M., when you can't find 
your feet with your hands or anything else. 

[138] 



A COMMUNICATION. 1 39 

Third, I want to know how to get off a 
tip-top, nobby dress suit, that cost thirty 
dollars, but looks as good as a hundred dol- 
lar one, when you can't tell the arms from 
the limbs of the other part, and keep pulling 
down on the wrong parts and up on the 
other wrong parts, all this at 4 130 A. M. 

Fourth. I want to know — but mamma 
says Td better not write any more for to- 
day ; so good-bye for the present. 
Yours, 

Old Subscriber, 
Constant Reader, 
Veritas, and the rest 



THE SUMMER GIRL'S PROVERBS. 

A YOUNG man in the hotel is worth ten 
in the city. 

An engagement in time saves nine. 

Love is a mocker, and whosoever is de- 
ceived thereby is a chump. 

Great riches are rather to be chosen than a 
good name, and silver and gold than loving 
favor. 

Train up a fiance in the way he should go, 
and when he is married he will not depart 
from it. 

A wise girl maketh a glad chaperon, but a 
foolish one hath lots of fun. 

He that winketh with the eye meaneth 
not business, and should not be considered 
in the chances of matrimony. 
[140J 



AN IMPORTANT DEFINITION. 

1HAD been telling the assembled multi- 
tude about a dude who sat next to me at 
the supper table in a Philadelphia hotel 
once. This dude was talking to another 
dude, and was telling him of an ailment he 
possessed. 

"The doctah," said the dude, "pwe- 
scwibed a teaspoonful of whisky evwy 
night on going to bed. But it didn't agwee 
with me and I had to stop taking it." 

" Probably made the blooming idiot 
drunk/ ' said a Chicago man who was 
crooking his elbow. 

"When is a man drunk? " asked the phil- 
osopher of the party. 

"A man is drunk when he is three sheets 
in the wind already and takes a couple more 
to see whether he is or not," answered the 
old salt. 

"In the army," said the lieutenant, "an 
officer is never drunk unless the command- 
ing officer finds it out." 

"In Kentucky," said a tall man whom we 
called Colonel, " there is no such thing as 

[141J 



142 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

drunkenness. You can't get drunk on 
Kentucky whisky — only happy. ' ' 

"You are wrong," broke in the philoso- 
pher, "I have made the matter a study with 
a view to correcting the erroneous impres- 
sion under which our lexicographers labor. 
Sooner or later you will see my definition in 
every dictionary in the land. A man, 
gentlemen, is drunk when he endeavors to 
light his cigar at the pump Then and not 
till then." 



NOT UP WITH SCIENCE. 

IT was in 1925. (You will observe that I 
am inventing a tense here. I call it the 
Historical Future Past, and have applied for 
a copyright.) A pale-faced youth with an 
immense head and a diminutive body sailed 
rapidly southward from the southern coast 
of Australia. After a short journey into 
the Antarctic Ocean he turned a crank, 
pressed a button and the boat came to rest. 

"I am now," he exclaimed exultingly, "at 
the antipodes of New York. I am as far 
away from her father as I can get. Here 
will I cast the die." He drew his electric 
aerophone from his pocket and called up 
New York. 

"Give me 79,503 Fifth avenue," he said 
to the young lady who was running things 
in the eighty -story building the Western 
Union has just completed. "Give it to me 
on your quickest electric wave, and please 
change that Colorado Madura for a Colorado 
Claro or stop smoking. I can smell it clear 
here. ' ' A moment later a bell rung in the 
youth's head, 

[143] 



144 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

"Ah, is that you Mr. Richfather? I 
wanted to speak to you about a little matter. 
I am Theodore Simpkins. You may have 
heard your daughter speak of me. I wish 
to marry her. I am poor but not too proud. 
Don't swear so, please. What did I under- 
stand your answer to be? " 

At this moment the youth dropped un- 
conscious, and remained so until the Aurora 
Australasis came along and bathed his head 
in eau de cologne. He revived in time to thank 
the Aurora. Then he felt a burning desire 
at his heart. He took out his Roentgen 
Ray Ready Relief apparatus and examined 
his heart closely. Seared upon it was this 
inscription. "Partially Paralyzed by Pep- 
per's Patent Electric Poor Suitor Annihila- 
tor, prepared especially for the use of Purse 
Proud Papas — patent applied for." 

"Invented and put on the market since I 
left New York ten days ago," muttered the 
youth sadly. "How can a fellow keep up 
with science in these days! O, how I 
wish that I lived back in the days when 
rich fathers could only kick and usually had 
the gout." 



i in 



CAMPING OUT. 

AND now hath come ye season when ye 
tired man of ye city doth think of ye 
woods and ye green hills far away, and of 
purling brooks and ye speckled brook trout 
therein — trout, by the way, that he couldn't 
catch if he tried for a thousand years. 

Yes, this same city man has just bought 
himself a new hunting suit (Heaven knows 
what he is going to hunt until next fall), 
and also the latest patent canoe that he has 
seen advertised in the magazines, likewise 
a tent that is absolutely waterproof (I'd 
like to see one; I've camped out four solid 
years of my life, taken all together, and I 
never saw or heard of one), and a few mil- 
lion other things. He has also telegraphed 
for a "noted guide/ ' at from three to five 
dollars a day, according to how M noted' ' the 
guide is ; and he is preparing to hie himself 
into the forest. There he will practice 
woodcraft as his famous forefathers did. 
He will carry the boat (he prefers to say 
canoe) and do all the chores and cook the 
meals, and the guide will sit around and tell 

[145] 



I46 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

him stories that were written by Adirondack 
Murray when he was an infant. 

That, Dreamer, is not camping out. 
The followers of rollicking Robin Hood did 
not do it that way. Neither do they do it 
that way in the far West. 

I well remember when I was a fifteen- 
year-old cow-boy in the wilds of Wyoming, 
years ago, what we used to consider a swell 
camp. It consisted of a bed, a frying-pan, 
an iron pot, and sometimes, if we were ab- 
solutely luxurious, a Dutch oven. The bed 
consisted of a worn and dirty saddle-blanket, 
for a mattress and coverlet: and for our 
pillow we used our cowboy saddle. The 
saddle wasn't so bad a pillow, by the 
way. 

The only objection to it was that the 
coyotes and other hungry beasts used to 
come and nibble at it while we were asleep. 
This was no second-rate camp. It was Fifth 
Avenue style. 

I know of one man whose broncho got 
away from him, who camped out with noth- 
ing for a bed but a copy of the Rocky Moun- 
tain News. Whether he put it under him or 
over him I have forgotten. But it snowed 
that night, and he learned one real use for 
a newspaper anyhow. I have heard of 



CAMPING OUT. 147 

men who had to resort to old letters from 
their girls in the East for the same purpose. 
That, O Sigher for the Woods, is real 
camping out. Go try it for a while and you 
will be perfectly willing to live a few more 
years in your Fifth Avenue mansion, and 
have a chance to go to Delmonico's occasion- 
ally and get a square meal. 



A LEAP-YEAR PROPOSAL IN PHILA- 
DELPHIA. 



She — 5 p. m. 


Will — 


6 P. M. 


You — 


7 P. M. 


Be — 


8 P. M. 


Mine? 


He — 9 p. m. 


This — 


IO P. M. 


Is — 


II P. M. 


So — 


Midnight. 


Sudden ! 




[i 4 8] 



THE PUGILISTS WHO MET; 

OR, 
A NEW WAY TO GET THEM TOGETHER. 

O' Duffy, champion heavy-weight tongue- 
lasher. 

McCarthy, champion heavy-weight chin- 
shooter. 

(They are separated by a distance of five 
thousand miles.) 

O'Duffy — Hello, ye blackguard. 

McCarthy — Is that you O'Duffy? I 
thought there was a smell of whisky 
around. 

(Each backs off several thousand miles.) 

O'Duffy — Do yez want to fight me, 
McCarthy? 

McCarthy — For forty thousand dollars 
and the championship, ye spalpeen. 

(Each backs off several thousand miles 
further.) 

O'Duffy — Make it an even hundred 
thousand and I'll put ye to sleep in wan 
round, McCarthy. 

McCarthy — I'll go ye, O'Duffy, and I 
won't do a thing to ye but kill ye. 

[149] 



150 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

(Each backs off five thousand miles more, 
and they spend the next two years arranging 
the details, in luxuriant verbiage.) 

O'Duffy — Are ye agreed, McCarthy? 

McCarthy — I'm tickled to death, 
O'Duffy. 

O'Duffy — That ye will be McCarthy. 

McCarthy — 'Twill be at your wake, 
O'Duffy. 

(On this each begins to back away again. 
They have backed but a few thousand miles 
when they meet on the other side of the 
earth. They faint from fright simultane- 
ously. On coming to, each proclaims the 
other M champion of the world." They 
swear eternal friendship and agree to buy 
each other drinks for the rest of their lives.) 






ASKING PAPA. 

Her Adorer — I am young but innocent, 
sir, and I love her. Why, I followed her 
from Newport to Bar Harbor, and I would 
go to the ends of the earth for her. 

Her Father — Have you ever rescued 
her from roughs, while she was doing mis- 
sion work in the slums of the east side? 

Her Adorer — Twice. 

Her Father — Have you a trysting-place 
in the park with her? 

Her Adorer — Of course I have. Haw- 
thorns and lilacs grow there, and she leaves 
a five-dollar pair of gloves hanging on a 
branch of one bush or the other, every time 
we part. 

Her Father — And what do you do with 
those gloves — treasure them ? 

Her Adorer — O, yes — for a time. Then 
I have them cleaned and sell them. I have 
to pay my board occasionally, you know. 

Her Father — Ah! — I don't remember 
that in any of Mr. Davis's books. 

Her Adorer — You should call him Rich- 
ard Harding Davis, sir. That last name is 

[151] 



152 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

too awfully common for the chronicler of 
New York society. 

Her Father — Yes, but you know I am 
only a millionaire, and I like to speak that 
way. It makes me think that I am familiar 
with him. 

Her Adorer — Possibly ) r ou may meet 
him some day. But you must stuay his 
works carefully, sir. 

Her Father — Are you speaking now 
sententiously or tentatively? 

Her Adorer — Neither ; according to the 
dictionary. But those two words should 
have occurred in our conversation by this 
time, so we may as well say both. 

Her Father — You will pardon me here 
for referring to the immortal original? 

Her Adorer — Certainly, sir; and while 
you do so I will gaze at his photograph and 
autograph, for inspiration. 

Her Father — Ah, to be sure! Have 
you a past, young man? 

Her Adorer — I regret to say that I was 
born without one. 

Her Father — It is a fatal defect, sir. 
You cannot have her. There are plenty of 
young men who are born with a future be- 
fore them, but my peerless daughter must 
have one born with a past. I have sworn it ! 



A NEW CONSTITUTION. 

(Especially prepared for the people of the present day.) 
PREAMBLE. 

We, the bamboozled people of the United 
States, in order to give the newspapers of 
our journalocuted country that which they 

have already usurped, etc., etc 

do ordain and establish this constitution for 
the United States of America. 

article I. 

Section i. All legislative powers herein 
granted shall be vested in the newspapers 
of the United States. 

Section 2. The House of Representatives 
shall consist of the daily newspapers of the 
United States. 

Section 3. The Senate shall consist of the 
weekly newspapers of the United States. 

ARTICLE II. 

Section 1. The executive power shall be 
vested in the newspaper owner who may be 
able to direct the affairs of his paper while 
residing the furthest distance from the 
United States. 

[153] 



154 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 
ARTICLE III. 

Section i. The judicial power of the 
United States shall be vested in one good 
magazine and in such inferior magazines as 
the one good magazine may consider in- 
ferior. 

ARTICLE IV. 

Section I. Full faith and credit shall be 
given to everything published in every 
newspaper in the United Stab 

Section 2. Every citizen of the United 
States shall be compelled to buy and read 
every newspaper published in the United 
States. 

Done in convention, by the unanimous 
consent of the newspapers of the United 
States. 

In witness whereof I have hereunto de- 
clined to subscribe my immortal name. 

Saddened Shade of 

George Washington. 



THE REASON. 

Penelope — So you were not married last 
June after all? 

Perdita — No. 

Penelope — But I thought it was all 
arranged — 

Perdita — It was. 

Penelope — And that all your parents 
and your parents' parents and your friends 
and enemies had agreed to it — 

Perdita (languid^) — They had. 

Penelope — And that the day was set and 
the trousseau bought and the invitations 
issued, the " officiating clergyman/ ' as they 
say in the newspapers, engaged and all 
that — 

Perdita — Yes, all that. 

Penelope — And that above all you loved 
each other ! 

Perdita — O yes, we loved each other. 
There was no doubt of that. 

Penelope — Well then, why in the world 
didn't you get married? 

Perdita — Well the reason was, my dear 
girl, that it rained. Wasn't it too bad? 

[155] 



LOVE. 

ANOTHER DESCRIPTION. 

A YOUNG girl has written me asking 
what love is. Do you think I ought to 
tell her? Well, I am going to, but pub- 
licly, for family reasons. 
Mabel : 

When chewing gum and ice cream lose 
their flavor and even matinees are barely 
attractive enough to warrant your attend- 
ing; when you develop a sudden interest in 
church work and frighten your mother into 
fits by taking an interest in cooking (a suffi- 
cient interest to look on and see how it is 
done); when, from the time " jocund day 
stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops" 
until the last ray of the setting sun kisses 
the flowers to sleep, you feel a peaceful 
ecstasy that resembles the sensation you had 
that time )^ou took a Turkish bath; when 
your appetite begins to fail, but nevertheless 
your friends begin to insist that you never 
before looked so well — 

That is love, t — h — a — t is love. 

When mamma warns you to be more care- 
ful in your conduct than you have hereto- 

[156] 



LOVE. 157 

fore been, and surprises you with several 
new dresses and a new bonnet ; when papa 
tells you that he doesn't know how he can 
ever live without you (and your small 
brother wanders out of the room intimating 
that he is something of a liar himself, but 
that somebody else takes the cake) — 
That is love, t — h — a — t is love. 

When you begin to think of George all 
day long and to dream of him at night ; when 
you begin to hate every other girl who looks 
sideways at him, and discover with the same 
joy with which a man finds a sleeper in his 
vest pocket that George is real handsome 
after all, and you do not know what made 
you once think him so homely; when he 
comes in the soft gloaming of the summer 
evening to sit with you while the little stars 
*hat peep ever and anon through the per- 
fumed branches of the trees sing a never- 
ceasing song of happiness ; and finally, when 
George takes you (delicate little 1 50-pounder 
that you are) in his lap, and tells you that 
those dear little hands of yours shall never 
be blistered with work, or that pure white 
brow furrowed with care — 

That is love, T— H— A— T is love. 

And it is also the worst skin game that is 
being played in this dear land of ours. Be- 
ware of it. 



AS HEARD BY HER. 

He — Well, did you enjoy the evening? 

She — Indeed I did. We went to the opera. 

He — What did you hear? 

She — What did I hear? Well, what 
didn't I hear! I heard that Nell Vander- 
dyke is engaged to Tom Browning, and that 
Jack Rentsarelow and Edith Singleton have 
quarreled and are not going to be married 
after all. Then I heard that Mrs. Tenbroke 
is going to get a divorce from her husband. 
Pen Peachblow is going to Europe and ex- 
pects to bag a duke at the very least. Mrs. 
Thorndyke has been sued by her dress- 
maker. The Livingstons have a baby. 
Count Cantukount is not a Count at all — 

He — But — 

She — Well, don't interrupt me. I 
thought you wanted to know what I heard ? 

He — So I did, but — 

She — Well, keep still, then. I — 

He — What I meant was : what opera did 
you hear? 

She — Oh — well, I'm sure I can't remem- 
ber. But I saw the name on the programme. 

[158] 



ADVICE TO THE SWEET GIRL GRADUATE. 

LIST to me, O girl ! Turn those reluctant 
feet of yours from the muddy place 
where the brook and river meet and bend 
your steps in my direction. Bend your ear 
in my direction also. I want to whisper a 
word of advice into it. And don't be afraid 
of my advice. You'll like it. 

Now, my dear, I know the subject of your 
thoughts. I can't say that I've ever been 
a girl (although I've been very near one 
many a time), but I can guess your thoughts 
just the same. You are wondering, as the 
sad springtime hastens on to jubilant June, 
whether it will be better to return to your 
home and take up your old domestic duties 
(of reading novels during the daytime and 
sitting out on the front porch with your 
young man evenings), like the simple, trust- 
ing girl you were before you were tried and 
tempered in the crucible of a fashionable 
boarding school, or whether you will enter 
the broader field of earnest endeavor along 
the right line of duty, and by your noble 
efforts and magnificent example not only 

[159] 



l6o THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

elevate the whole race of man, but also put 
a lace flounce and a pink ribbon around this 
battered old cynical hulk of the world that 
will make it look as cute as a twenty-seven- 
cent pillow sham. Now that's what you're 
thinking about, isn't it? I knew it. Give 
me a piece of gum. 

Now, my advice is to adopt the latter and 
nobler course. Gird up your loins, draw 
your 'prentice blade and plunge into the 
arena. No, I don't mean the arena, I mean 
the thickest of the fight. Come to think 
about it, though, I guess you'd better choose 
the arena after all. There's usually better 
walking in arenas. Cry triumphantly "Sic 
Itur ad Astra" and wade in. If you prefer 
to sic Astra on Itur instead, why do so. But 
my own opinion is that Itur can lick Astra 
any day. 

Of course you will have to gain your 
parents' consent. This can be done by 
pleading or by paralyzing. The latter is pref- 
erable. You can readily paralyze the old 
man by a few references to Euclid. He'll 
think you're talking about Euclid avenue, 
Cleveland, and when you disabuse his mind 
of the error he will cave in. You can ap- 
proach your mother on Horace. Shoot off 
some of his poetry to her in his native 



ADVICE TO THE SWEET GIRL GRADUATE. l6l 

dialect. She will think it is some young 
man you met on the train, and when you 
explain she will capitulate. Strike while 
the iron is hot — in other words, while she 
is doing the week's ironing. 

Now I advise you to do this for your own 
best good. This is just what your parents 
are expecting and they are all prepared for 
it. Papa's got a lecture all ready for you 
and mamma is looking lovingly every day 
at that slipper she used to use with such 
telling effect in the dear dead days beyond 
recall. She is prepared to give you a post- 
graduate course in everyday life that will be 
worth money to you in the days when you 
have to mend your husband's socks. And 
it will be better all around to get through 
with it all as soon as possible. Savez? 
ii 



WHIST SIGNALS. 

PLAYING the King before the Queen — I 
am married. 

Playing the Queen before the King — I 
love you. 

Trumping partner's ace — I do not love 
you. 

Reneging — I am not so big a fool as I look. 

Forgetting what is trumps — I am not 
thinking of you. 

Taking a trick with a deuce — May I see 
you home? 

Establishing a long suit — Meet me by 
moonlight alone. 

Playing second hand high — We are ob- 
served. 

Spilling the cards when shuffling — Is that 
homely looking man your husband? 

Making a slobbering cut — There are 
others. 

Holding over five trumps — I am rich. 

Holding over thirteen trumps — I am a 
gambler. 

Taking all the tricks — Follow me and 
you will wear diamonds. 

[162] 



ALAS, POOR NEW YORICK. 

CHICAGO (A. D. 2094) — Let me see [takes 
the skull). Alas, poor New Yorick. I 
knew it, Horatio. A city of infinite jest, of 
most excellent fancy. It hath borne my 
debts on its back a thousand times. And 
how abhorred in my imagination it was — 
for it failed to get the World's Fair! Here 
were those hotels at which I got something 
good to eat the few times in my life that I 
ever did. Where be your Ward Mc's now, 
your Ollies, your Bourkes and your Chaun- 
ceys that were wont to set the table in a 
roar? Not one now to mark the Isle of Man- 
hattan. The site of New Yorick is but a 
curiosity of history. To what base uses we 
may return at last ! ( Throws down skull and 
spends half an hour computing by logarithms the 
number of stories in the last office building erected 
in Chicago). 

[163] 



THE REPORTER'S CHOICE. 

** TJE has given me my choice! " 

II The young reporter crammed a wad 
of copy paper into his pocket with a gesture 
of despair, ran his hand through a head of 
hair that had not been cut since last summer 
and shook his fist at a door that bore the 
legend, "Managing Editor." Then with a 
deftness born of long practice he rolled a 
cigarette, lit it, buttoned his coat through- 
out and started for the elevator. 

"I may either go up to Harlem and in- 
terview a clergyman who is on trial for 
heresy — " 

At this point he paused, unbuttoned his 
overcoat, and went down into the depths of 
his trousers pockets, with a net result of a 
quarter of a dollar. "Car fare ten cents — 
beer fifteen — lunch nixey," said he in a 
sepulchral voice. And then he pondered 
deeply. 

"Or I may go to Cuba and write a per- 
sonal interview with General Weyler on the 
conduct of the Cuban war. ' ' 

Here he paused again and looked long and 
[164] 



THE REPORTER'S CHOICE. l6$ 

thoughtfully at the quarter. And again he 
ruminated, "Lunch five cents — beer 
twenty." 

An hour and a half later he returned to 
the office with his copy. 

Did the young reporter go to Harlem? 
Nay, one cannot go to Harlem and return 
and write a column and a half in an hour 
and a half. 

But one can go to Cuba and return and 
write the same amount in the given time 
readity. Especially il one has a sandwich 
and four beers to bear one up in the under- 
taking. 



HOW. 

YOU ask me how to get a play acted. 
I can tell you to a moral certainty. 

In the first place you must write a play 
that is bound to be a success, and this fact 
must be apparent to any manager merely 
from reading it over. 

Make it original, startling, witty, intensely 
interesting, with plenty of action, etc., etc. 

Typewrite and have it copyrighted. 

Then take it to a manager. Ask him to 
read it and leave it with him. 

After he has had it six months call for it. 

Call again two months later. By this time 
he has been able to give the story and most 
of the dialogue to some hack writer who 
under his directions can reproduce it in as 
good form as it was in the original. You 
will probably get it back this time. It will 
be dirty and some of the pages missing 
where the strongest scenes are, but you can 
have it re-typewritten. 

Now take it to another manager. He will 
act precisely as the first did, but he will be 
quicker. Not on your account, but he will 

[I66J 



HOW. 167 

have heard that the first manager is to pro- 
duce that particular story under a different 
name and he will have to hustle on his own 
account. He has as much right to it as the 
other manager, hasn't he? Therefore, why 
should you kick? 

You may burn the play up now and watch 
the fun. You have not only got it pro- 
duced, but doubly produced, and in a month 
the managers will be getting out injunctions 
against each other. 

Lie low now, and play your cards care- 
fully. If you are very, very shrewd and 
particularly cautious, perhaps you may be 
able to get one or the other of the managers 
to give you $5 for testifying in his behalf. 
And by testifying you not only make $5, 
but you are enabled to decide which of the 
hack writers is to be known as the writer of 
the play. 



THE STERN REALITIES OF WAR. 

) A Society Debutante. 
DRAMATIS PERSON&\ A Plebe Lieutenant in the 

) A rmy. 

Scene : — A deep window-seat; ball-room in the distance. 

She {admiringly) — You really lead a very 
dangerous life, then? 

He — On my honor, I assure you. 

She — Yet you bear no wounds? 

He — I am, like a true soldier, too modest 
to show them. But if you knew, ah — 

She — Indeed ! It must be terrible, then. 
And was it dangerous at West Point? 

He — Dangerous? Well, I guess it was. 
There is no experience a young officer has 
that is more trying that that. Why, all the 
pretty girls in the country go there to get 
married, and the engagement is on all along 
the line. Many a brave fellow has been 
captured there. And you've got to fight it 
out on that line if it takes all summer and 
all winter, too. 

She — But in the army proper — it is not 
so bad there, is it? 

He — Not so bad? Ten times worse. 

[168] 



THE STERN REALITIES OF WAR. 169 

You just ought to see some of our poor boys 
trying to dodge their captains' daughters! 
Eleven-inch shells from rifled guns are not 
in it with them. There is no service in the 
world that compares with ours in dangers 
of that sort. Why, in the European armies 
they won't let a fellow marry without the 
government's permission. With us it is 
different. We are permitted to run all sorts 
of risks. The wonder to me is that more of 
our men are not captured. 

She — Dear me, is it as bad as that in the 
Eastern posts? 

He — Just as bad. Why, on one occasion, 
when my left flank was turned, I found my- 
self engaged to twelve different girls, and 
was about to capitulate, horse, foot and 
artillery, to the unlucky thirteenth, when 
the government took pity on me and sent 
me out to fight Indians. That was all that 
saved me. 

She — But can't you get retired? 

He {sadly) — No — the fact is, General 
Miles thinks I'm too tired already. 

She — Poor fellow ! 



BAFFLED. 

Chappie — Aw there, deah chappie, I 
hardly expected to find you at the club to- 
day. What's up? 

Algie — Everything. I've given up. 
That's what's the matter. 

Chappie — Given up? Good gwacious, 
deah boy, you don't mean to say that 
you're going to quit us? 

Algie — That's just it. 

Chappie — Why you've been the greatest 
monochromic-maniac of us all. What will 
we do for a leader without the white plume 
of Navarre and all that sort of thing we used 
to hear about at college? 

Algie — Can't help it, I'm done for, old 
fellah. 

Chappie — Why, what do you mean ? 

Algie — Why, just this. Haven't I 
bought all my clothes in London ? 

Chappie — Yes, that's English y'know. 

Algie — And not paid for them. 

Chappie — Yes, that's English y'know. 

Algie — And turned up my trousers, and 
played golf and yelled for the Valk)nrie III, 

[170] 



BAFFLED. 171 

and tlie Cambridge athletes and all that sort 
of thing? 

Chappie — Yes, that was correct English, 
y'know. 

Algie — Well just at the end I have come 
to the limit of my resources. 

Chappie — Aw, you don't mean it, deah 
boy? 

Algie — I do. I have discovered that I 
cannot marry a daughter of the Vanderbilts. 

Chappie — Poor boy ! 

Algie — Yes — And I've got to remain 
poor. That's just what's the matter. 



THE GRAMMAR OF MATRIMONY. 
DEFINITIONS. 

Noun — The name of a man. 

Pronoun — Anything that stands for a 
man, e. g., dude, octogenarian, etc. 

Adjective — Word that qualifies a man, 
e. g., rich, poor, handsome, homely, etc. 

Verb — There is but one worth consider- 
ing, u e., to love. Neg., to love not. 

Adverb — Anything that qualifies "to 
love," e.g., "madly, passionately, fondly," 
or "not a little bit." 

Preposition — Anything that introduces 
a noun. N. B. — If the noun introduced is 
a proper noun, you are under obligations to 
the preposition. If a common noun, you 
are not. 

Conjunction — "Yes" or "no," as the 
case may be. 

DECLENSIONS. 

There are two — proper and improper. 

Proper — Ah no, I do not love you, and I 
cannot marry you, but I will be a sister to 
you. 

[172] 



THE GRAMMAR OF MATRIMONY. 1 73 

Improper — What, marry you? Not on 

your tin-type. Go chase yourself, young 

feller. 

conjugations. 

Future — A husband that is to be. 

Future Perfect — A satisfactory hus- 
band that is to be. 

Present — Your husband of to-day. 

Imperfect — The husband you are think- 
ing of getting a divorce from. 

Past — The husband who has gone to that 
bourne from which no traveler returns.. 

Past Definite — The husband from 
whom you have been divorced. 

Past Indefinite — The husband who went 
away ten years ago, and whose present 
whereabouts are unknown. 

NUMBER. 

Plural — Married. 
Singular — Unmarried. 

GENDER. 

Masculine — A man or a woman who 
wears bloomers. 
Feminine — Woman who wears skirts. 




A Commencement de Silcle Wedding. 



A COMMENCEMENT DE SIECLE WEDDING. 

(DESCRIBED IN A LETTER FROM THE BRIDE.) 

Paris, June 30th, 1906. 
My Dearest Lenore : 

Here we are in Paris, and for the first 
time I have a chance to write a few lines to 
the dear chum of my girlhood days. I sup- 
pose you want to know first about my wed- 
ding — you naturally would, as under the 
old system you would have been first brides- 
maid. I know you felt badly that you could 
not be, and worse that you could not even 
get into the church ; but when you remem- 
ber that even poor papa and mamma could 
not be afforded standing-room in the church 
you will feel less harshly toward me, I 
know. We are all mere creatures in the 
hands of a giant power, the press, and here- 
after no one who is anyone will ever be able 
to be married in the presence of anybody 
but reporters. Just think! The church 
only seats 1,800 people, and there were over 
2,500 reporters present, each one struggling 
to get more information than any of the 
others. 

But to describe the wedding. In the first 
[175] 



176 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

place the officiating clergyman was the 
religious editor of the JVhirled(s.n ex-clergy- 
man). We were both anxious to have dear 
old Doctor Snorer, but it was impossible. 
The religious editor did very well, though, 
and was quite clever. He made a shorthand 
note of the service as he read it and declared 
as he kissed me that he got a "beat" on all 
the other papers in the country, and said he 
hoped his success would advance him from 
the ' ' religious' ' to the ' ' sporting* ' desk. My 
bridesmaids were lady reporters from the 
Discordor, Cribune, Chimes and Distress, and I 
was given away by a reporter from the 
Whereald, who represented papa very well, 
having had an actor "make him up" for the 
occasion. Mamma was impersonated by a 
female reporter from the Philadelphia Hedger , 
which they said was appropriate because it 
was the dearest old womanly paper in the 
country. She didn't have to be made up. 
The ushers were reporters from Boston, and 
the pages were from two papers in San 
Francisco. Our coachman was a reporter 
from St. Louis, and the footman one from 
Baltimore. The rest I believe simply con- 
stituted the audience. A number of the 
papers insisted at first that Jack and I should 
be impersonated by reporters, but we con- 



A COMMENCEMENT DE SIECLE WEDDING. 1 77 

suited a lawyer and he declared that such an 
arrangement might wed the reporters, but 
certainly would not wed us, so, as a matter 
of necessity and after much grumbling on 
their part, we were eventually permitted to 
be present at our own wedding. 

Our bridal party is a quiet one and as ex- 
clusive, I suppose, as we could expect. It 
consists of Jack and myself, and twenty-four 
traveling correspondents. They leave us 
alone in our own suite, and in that and that 
alone we have our own suite way. There 
were originally twenty-six of them, but two 
have departed under instructions to work up 
a divorce between a French Count and his 
American wife. A sensation drouth is 
feared, I believe, in the eastern part of the 
United States, and they are all very much 
worried about the news crop. Write soon. 

Ever lovingly, 

LUCY. 

P. S. Do try to be a nobody and to marry 
a nobody, so that some of our set may be 
able to see an old-fashioned wedding before 
the custom is forgotten. 
12 



A SUCCESSFUL DRAMATIST. 



THE young reporter 
walked down Park 
Row with head erect 
and chest expanded. 
Ever and anon he cast 
a look of pitying con- 
tempt over and across 
the way, where Ches- 
ter Lord and Arthur 
Brisbane were draw- 
ing a measly $20,000 a 
year for editorial work 
on their respective 
papers. I said " young 
reporter,' 1 but I should 
have said "ex-repor- 
ter," for he was now a 
dramatist — the only American dramatist in 
the world. Indeed, he was the very one you 
have heard talked about as "the coming 
American Dramatist. ' ' He had come. The 
path to glory was spread before his feet and 
he had more than $2 in his pocket. 

How had he achieved it? Ah, he succeeded 
[178] 




A SUCCESSFUL DRAMATIST. 179 

where we have all failed, and, like all 
geniuses, his plan was simplicity itself. He 
went to a manager and the manager told him 
the kind of a plot he wanted. By a little 
manipulation, in fact, he extracted from the 
manager all the plot that was necessary to 
his purpose. Then he went to the star and 
had the star write the speeches he was to 
make and arrange the scenes he was to 
appear in. Then he went to the leading 
lady and did likewise. Ditto with the 
villain. Even so with the funny man, who 
furnished all his own gags. And so on with 
the rest, even to the servant who surrepti- 
tiously drinks of his master's wine while the 
audience is getting seated in the first act, 
and the chambermaid who dusts the furni- 
ture in the second act while the men who 
have been out getting a clove are reseating 
themselves. Was the play accepted? Well, 
say' 



FIN DE SIECLE ARITHMETIC. 

1. Laura is worth $150,000. Her father is 
worth $600,000. Her mother is worth 
$200,000 and several solid gold teeth. How 
much do I love Laura? 

2. If a grocer's scales weigh three ounces 
short in every pound, will they ever fall 
from his eyes? Will he die poor? Will he 
ever be prosecuted in New York? 

3. Two pugilists are matched to fight for 
$40,000 and the championship of the world. 
One talks at the rate of three thousand words 
an hour and the other at the rate of two 
thousand words an hour. When will they 
fight? 

4. Lord Dunraven progressed eastward at 
a given velocity. As he progressed, his 
kick against the Defender increased directly 
with the square of the distance. If he made 
an ass of himself by the time he reached 
London, what would he have been had he 
gone to St. Petersburg? 

5. If the Democratic party runs Grover 
Cleveland for a third term, how many ducks 
will he shoot in the four years succeeding 
his present term? 

[180] 



LITERALLY LITERARILY TRUE. 

Wife — Ah, I see you have bought a 
magazine. Pray what is in it? 

Husband — Some more about the lives of 
Napoleon and Lincoln. 

Wife — Well, what else? 

Husband — Another hypodermic injection 
of Howell's passions. 

Wife — And what else? 

Husband — More reminiscences of Steven- 
son. 

Wife — Ah, and what else? 

Husband — Another article on modern 
artists and their work. 

Wife — What else? 

Husband — Some poetry that has neither 
rhyme nor metre, and that you can't under- 
stand, illustrated, with a woman standing 
upside down on a head of cabbage. 

Wife — Why, my dear, you seem to have 
read the magazine. 

Husband — Oh, no, I haven't read one 
for a long time. But the table of contents 
has been the same in every one of them for 
the last ten years, you will remember, 

[x8i] 



FOOLISH AMBITION OF THE RICH. 

WHETHER it is a fad or an ambition I am 
not able to say, after all. But I have 
been struck forcibly by the recent attempts 
of rich men and rich men's sons to make a 
name in the world. It is absolutely the 
only characteristic I have in common with 
them, and that is why it struck me, I sup- 
pose. I dearly wish I had their money in 
common with them and not their ambition. 
Just fancy dividing up with John Jacob 
Astor and quarreling over the last five-cent 
piece! I suppose he would be willing to 
match me for it, though. But I will promise 
not to quarrel if he will promise to divide. 
If that isn't fair, let him make a proposition 
that he thinks will be. My P. O. address 
is — * 

Now, there is that daughter of a hundred 
earls who writes novels better than those of 
us who have to write them for daily sauer- 
kraut. And then there is that young million- 
aire who wrote a Jules Verne book and then 

* (Mr. Hall has no false modesty, nor any other kind, but to prevent 
his being flooded with letters from millionaires we have concluded to 
omit the address. The Publishers.) 

[182] 



FOOLISH AMBITION OF THE RICH. 1 83 

invented a sprinkling-cart. Think of de- 
scending from Jules Verne to a sprinkling- 
cart ! Now comes the aforesaid John Jacob 
Astor to investigate the secret of the Keeley 
motor, as though every one does not know 
that the secret is bi-chloride of gold. Don't 
put any money in it, John. Or, if you do, 
take it out of your share. 

Why, the first thing you know we shall 
hear of Chauncey Depew inventing a brake 
to a bicycle ; or of Teddy Roosevelt perfect- 
ing a nose improver that will enable police- 
men to smell whisky three miles and a half 
away (the best of them can only smell 
whiskey a block or so now — mark that I say 
smell it, not how far they can smell of it), or 
possibly of the Duke of Marlborough patent- 
ing a perambulator. 



CABLE CAR CONDUCT. 



STAND on a corner and signal in digni- 
fied manner for the car to stop. This 
may be done by raising the finger or um- 
brella. Do not swear or gesticulate. It is 
a waste of energy. 

After twenty-eight cars have passed with- 
out stopping pursue one of the two follow- 
ing courses: 

Offer the gripman a twenty-five cent cigar 

to stop, or 
hire a truck- 
man to block 
the way with 
his truck. 

Having 
eff e cted a 
landing o n 
the cable car, 
lurch forci- 
bly back- 
ward as the 
car starts. 
Step on a 
fat man's 
foot. 
[x84] 




CABLE CAR CONDUCT. 1 85 

Hit a dude in the eye-glass with your um- 
brella. 

Knock a baby's head off with your elbow. 

Lurch heavily forward every time the car 
stops. 

Lurch backward again when it starts again. 

If a pretty girl be on board and within 
reach, grab her around the waist at each of 
these lurches. If she is sitting down take 
a seat in her lap. 

Repeat the foregoing at the appropriate 
times. 

Upon the arrival of the car at your corner, 
bribe the conductor to stop if possible. If 
not, have your wife and children trained to 
spread and hold a net in front of your house, 
and as the car passes jump into it. 

Get an accident insurance policy for each 
trip. 









H 



AUTUMN. 

OW beautiful is autumn! 

See the leaves, redder than blushing 






cheeks. 

See them fall. 

See them lost for aye. 

Ah, the clouds! 

The clouds, the flying clouds! 

The clouds with silver linings! 

Observe ! They float in the ethereal blue. 

Ah, the young girl ! 

She watches the flying clouds. 

Her heart is as light as the clouds. 

Her little feet trip lightly o'er the pave- 
ment made clean by Col. Waring. 

Still she watches the clouds. 

Ah, she falls like the red, red leaves! 

She stepped on a banana peel — 

While her soul was lost with the flying 
clouds in the ethereal blue. 

Hear her cuss! 

It is autumn. 

[186] 






LOVE. 

T *OVE — A nervous disorder affecting the 
i-i entire system, and sometimes even the 
clothes and food of the victim. Peculiar to 
both sexes of all ages, from childhood to 
second childhood. Always fatal in age, 
seldom in youth. 

Symptoms — Loss of appetite and interest 
in mundane affairs. Anxiety as to personal 
appearance. Longing for flowers and 
poetry. Sudden affection for children, 
especially babies that the victim has 
formerly despised. Demented belief in the 
absolute perfection of some being of the op- 
posite sex. Vacant expression of the eyes 
and cerebral cavity. Patient speaks in 
monosyllables and takes an especial interest 
in the monosyllable "yes." 

Treatment — One dose of the monosylla- 
ble "no" and good nursing, for males. For 
females, a new seal-skin sacque, diamonds 
and a trip to Europe are often efficacious. 

Marriage is an absolute specific. But it is 
so dangerous that it is never used except in 
extreme cases. 

[187J 



WHAT HE REMEMBERED 

OF THE FIRST SHAKESPEAREAN PLAY HE EVER 

SAW. 

C7 OOD morrow, good my lord 
vJ Marry, and how now? 

E'en so, my lord. 

The king doth wake to-night, and takes 
his rouse. 

Keeps wassel, and the swaggering up- 
spring reels. 

Gad zooks! Is't so? 

I'st. 

Think it no more ! 

For Nature, crescent, does not grow 
alone, 

Its thew, and bulk — 

Odds bobs ! And even so ! 

[188] 



CONDENSED GUIDE TO POLITENESS. 

CONDUCT IN THE STREET. 

WHEN three or four ladies are walking 
together they should maintain an un- 
broken line across the pavement. In this 
way they can regulate the velocity of others 
without interfering with their own con- 
versation. 

If a lady and gentleman meet who are but 
slightly acquainted the lady should wink 
first. American ladies never courtesy in 
the street. Neither do they dance a minuet 
or other dance. 

If a lady offer her arm to a gentleman and 
he refuse it she should not be offended. 
Men are proverbially queer. 

When a stranger offers to carry you over 
a mud puddle accept with calmness and 
savoir faire. Do not laugh when the next 
person comes along, slips and falls into it. 
Merely scream. 

If you wish to stop a car (cable or other- 
wise), put a couple of tons of pig iron on the 
track. If you have not time to do this take 
a running jump and get on the best way 
you can. 

[189] 



A DOMESTIC CONVERSATION. 

Her Father — So you have had a pro- 
posal, my daughter? 

Herself — Yes, papa — several. An ice- 
man proposed to me. 

Her Father (breathless!)) — Did you accept 
him, my dear? 

Herself — Nay, nay, papa. 

Her Father — Ingrate ! 

Herself — After him a plumber proposed 
to me, dear papa. 

Her Father {excitedly) — And him — did 
you accept him? 

Herself — Not for jewels and precious 
stones, papa mine. 

Her Father — Fool ! Idiot ! 

Herself — I had a third proposal, papa. 
The gentleman is an iceman in the summer 
time and a plumber in the winter. 

Her Father (on the verge of apoplexy) — 
Madeline — 

Herself (calmly) — I accepted him, father. 

Her Father — Fall on my neck, my 
angel child — you are the rarest rose of 
them all. 

[IQO] 



IT IS SPRING. 

IT is Spring. 
m The merry birds sing lustily in the bud- 
ding trees. 

Gentle breezes blow hither and thither in 
wanton sport. 

The sun smiles with lovely radiance on 
all the green glad land. 

Flowers are scattered by the magnificent 
hand of Providence over all the land; we 
can buy roses around the corner at the 
florist's at $8.00 per dozen. Nay, I do not 
mean that we can buy them, but that he can 
sell them at that price. 

It is Spring, gladsome Spring, and the 
only drawbacks to our perfect enjoyment of 
the fact are these : 

We are out of a job. 

We are out of money. 

We are out of credit. 

We are out of provisions. 

We are out of coal. 

We are out at elbows. 

We are not out of debt. 

And we fear that we shall soon be put out 
of doors. 

[191] 



A LETTER TO HER HUSBAND. 

(FIN-DE-SIECLE STYLE.) 

DEAR WILL: 
Our daughter Ethel was married to a 
young man seventeen minutes after our 
arrival at this most delightful of all summer 
resorts. I have not yet met the young 
man. May, being two years younger, took 
almost three hours to secure a husband. 
Poor dear ! she is not nearly so experienced 
as Ethel, so there is no reason why she 
should feel so mortified. Our George is not 
doing nearly as well as the girls. He has 
proposed eleven times, and tells me he got 
the " marble heart," whatever that means, 
in every instance. He has only been here 
twenty-four hours, however, and in my 
opinion was handicapped by his bicycle suit. 
They are so common, you know. Perhaps 
in his golfing costume, to-morrow, he may 
do better. The baby is flirting with a pair 
of twins in the moonlight on the back piazza. 
That he will marry one of them before the 
week is out I am quite sure. But I do hope 
the poor dear will not commit bigamy — or 
shall I call it littleamy? I will see you 

[192] 



A LETTER TO HER HUSBAND. I93 

when I come down Saturday, if I do not in 

the meanwhile elope with a young French 

count who is stopping here. Every one 

says he is a spurious count. I don't know 

just what they mean by that, but I suppose 

it is something very complimentary. 

Lovingly, but hastily, 

MARIA. 
13 



CONDENSED GUIDE TO POLITENESS. 

THE MAKING OF VISITS. 

DON'T visit slight acquaintances for a 
longer period than a month — if you 
do, however, do not complain about the food. 

If a servant purloin your watch or other 
valuables do not complain to your hostess. 
Take one of hers. You stand a good chance 
of getting the better of the bargain. 

It is considered de trop in the haut monde to 
use your hostess 1 carriage more than eight 
hours a day. 

Don't gossip about your hostess until 
you have concluded your visit. Do not get 
so interested in her private correspondence 
as to become preoccupied, unless you are 
quite sure she will not return unexpectedly. 

Do not spank her children for her, or 
offer to lighten her sorrows by poisoning 
any of her canines and felines. 

While a guest, do not borrow anything 
but money. You would have to return any- 
thing else. 

Be blithesome and cheerful. In a word, 
act as though you were entirely at home, 
which is equivalent to saying do not act as 
you do when you are at home. 

[194] 



HOW TO BEHAVE. 

MEVER lie — or at least if you must lie 
lie about something nobody knows or 
cares about, so you will not be caught. 
Avoid exaggeration. Every one is "onto 
it." 

Never laugh at the fate of others — ex- 
cepting only the predicament of the man 
who, with seven bundles of dry goods for 
his wife, has fallen into three inches of mud. 

Never treat a man to a cock-tail in the 
expectation that he will treat you to one in 
turn. On the contrary stand before the bar 
talking about yourself until he is willing to 
treat you to shut you up. You are then 
ahead of the game and can cease talking 
with dignity and a drink. 

Never give your seat in a car to any but 
a pretty woman. The homely ones all have 
disagreeable tempers and might not thank 
you, which would be disappointing, 1 don't 
think. 

When a man asks you to lend him fifty 
dollars don't lie to him. Be a man and tell 
him you haven't it. You . can't fool a man 
who is dead broke. 

[195] 



HINTS ON SWIMMING. 

GO to some place where there is sufficient 
water. There is no use trying to swim 
in a dew or a heavy mist. 

Procure a bathing suit. If you were to 
bathe in your store clothes or dress suit you 
would be considered eccentric, and justly so. 

Procure an instructor. A pretty girl 
makes the best instructor for a young man, 
and a good-looking youth for a young and 
timid girl. 

Enter the water boldly if you are a man — 
timidly if you are a girl. These are con- 
ventional antics. It is safe betting that the 
girl is more familiar with water than the 
man, but that doesn't count. 

If you are of the male persuasion, remain 
as close as possible to the side of your fair 
teacher. If you are of the female persua- 
sion, remain closer. 

Remark that ' ' The water is rather wet to- 
day/' to show that you can be witty and 
original under the most trying circum- 
stances. 

Shriek and yell in order to furnish some 
excitement for the spectators. It is by such 

[196] 



HINTS ON SWIMMING. 1 97 

thoughtfulness as this that we endear our- 
selves to others. 

Now throw out your hands, throw back 
your head as though you had the spinal 
meningitis, draw up your legs (if a girl I 
mean limbs, of course), take a long breath, 
it may be your last, and strike out just as 
they told you to in that book you were 
studying the night before. 

Make a bold effort. Kick, struggle, 
scream for help, swallow a gallon of water, 
and say your prayers hurriedly. Grab your 
instructor anywhere, but about the neck 
if possible, and hang on tight. Choke him 
or her if possible. At all events pull out 
some of his or her hair to remember the oc- 
casion by. 

If you are not drowned thank your in- 
structor kindly for saving your life — a life 
that was worthless until that moment, but 
which you will now endeavor to make 
worthy, etc., etc. 

If you are drowned this may be omitted. 



(ftflroap 

YOUNG Mr. Morrison of the Daily Planet 
wandered out on one of the numerous 
piers that make certain fashionable portions 
of the Atlantic coast look like the rim of a 
gigantic cogwheel. It was the last day of 
his vacation and he was getting ready to 
return to the hot metropolis. He had spent 
the morning bidding good-bye to three 
young ladies to whom he had been making 
violent and simultaneous love. With the 
savings of a year he had posed for two 
glorious weeks as a young man of fortune, 
and, to use his own expression, he had "torn 
Mt. Desert wide open." He had been 
looked upon with great favor by the femi- 
nine contingent of idlers, but with growing 

[198] 



THE HERO MAKER. 199 

suspicion by the adolescent collegians who 
associated with them. He had won the 
hearts of the young ladies and the money of 
the young gentlemen with equal ease. As 
he had returned the hearts to the keeping 
of the young men, however, and spent the 
money on the young ladies, he could not 
look upon himself in any other light than 
that of a public benefactor. Hence he was 
contemplating himself with considerable 
satisfaction as he strolled up the pier. 
There still was the greater part of a hun- 
dred dollars in his pocketbook and three 
locks of hair and a dozen cigars more or 
less equally distributed through his clothes. 

The pier was vacant save for the presence 
of a solitary little girl who sat on a camp 
chair at the end of it. He glanced at her 
quite casually. 

"She is clad in raiment as white as the 
driven snow," said he to himself, with a 
self -appreciative grin, "and her golden hair 
is hanging down her back." But as he ap- 
proached her more closely, he suddenly ex- 
claimed, "By Jove, she's crying ! M He walked 
lip to her. She was indeed crying bitterly. 

"Hello, kid," said young Mr. Morrison, 
laying his hand soothingly on her shoulder, 
"what's the matter?" 



200 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

"I'm bewailing my fate," whimpered the 
little girl. 



> m 


- 






***" 






\ 


™ 




rSjL 






"What's the Matter?" 
"Bewailing your fate, eh? Humph! 
Sounds kind of professional. I say, kid, are 
your father and mother devotees of Momus, 



THE HERO MAKER. 201 

Terpsichore, or any of those ducks? I mean, 
are they on the stage? " 

"No," answered the little girl, "but they 
are cruel/ ' 

"Ah, worshipers at the shrine of Bac- 
chus, probably," mused Mr. Morrison. 
1 ' Well, in what particular way are they cruel, 
kid? Tell me. Perhaps I can do something 
for you. I'ma sort of a knight-errant, that 
is, I do most of my work at night and make 
a good many errors, according to the city 
editor. But confide in me, nevertheless. 
Perhaps I can get the Planet to take up your 
case and put you under the protection of the 
S. P. C. C. In what way are they cruel? " 

"They make me earn their living," blub- 
bered the girl. 

"Make you earn their living! Well, it 
can't be much of a living. I don't believe 
you are a day over ten years of age. What 
is your particular line? M 

"I'm a hero-maker, sir," she answered. 

"A hero-maker," gasped the astonished 
reporter. ' ' Well, that's a new one. Every- 
thing is new nowadays — even my cuffs. I 
suppose you're a 'new' girl' and before long 
I fancy we'll be hearing of 'new' babies. 
Will you kindly tell me what a hero-maker 
is and how you make a living by being one?" 



202 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 



"I permit my life to be saved/' said the 
little girl seriously. 

''That's strange," ejaculated Mr. Mor- 
rison. "Most people object to familiarities 
of that description." 

"You don't understand," said the girl. 

"No, I'm afraid I don't." 

"It's this way," she explained. "Lots of 
people, young men of fortune mostly, but 
now and then young women who want to 
make an impression, like to get a reputation 
as life-savers. Papa talks it up with the 
young men he thinks will do, and mamma 
with the young women. Then, if they are 
willing to pay the fee of fifty dollars, I fall 
into the water and let them rescue me. 
Then papa writes them a letter of thanks 
and gives them a photograph of me with an 
appropriate inscription on it. It's a great 
scheme. My life has been saved ever so 
many times. We go to all the famous ocean 
resorts in the world." 

"Yes, it's a great scheme," assented Mr. 
Morrison, whistling softly to himself, "but 
I don't see anything particularly cruel about 
it." There was a chance for professional 
work here, and he appreciated the op- 
portunity. 

"Well, you would if you were in my 
place," she went on. "You see, they really 



THE HERO MAKER. 203 

do save my life. I can't swim a stroke, and 
if they didn't I'd drown. It's too bona fide. 
That's what's the matter with it, and I'm 
frightened to death every time I fall in." 
And, like all women, new and old, she pro- 
ceeded to prove her terror by her tears. 

1 ' That puts a different face on the matter, ' ' 
the young man admitted. And he set his 
quick wits to work to figure out a plan by 
which the Planet could rescue this girl from 
her cruel parents with due credit to itself 
and incidentally to him. Suddenly he heard 
a simultaneous crash and shriek and looked 
up in time to see the little girl fall backward 
into the sea. The rickety little camp stool, 
provided no doubt by her cruel parents, had 
broken, or rather parted, and precipitated 
her into the water. In an instant young 
Mr. Morrison followed her. He was a strong 
swimmer and in a few minutes had her back 
on the pier. 

"There," said he, much pleased with him- 
self, "that time your life was saved in dead 
earnest. ' ' 

"Oh, you're so good, so noble," mur- 
mured the hero-maker. 

Mr. Morrison thought pleasantly of the 
paragraph in the Planet's statement of the 
case in which it referred to the gallant 



204 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

manner in which one of its own reporters 
really and legitimately had saved the little 
girl's life, thereby winning her confidence 
and learning her cruel secret. The young 
lady herself was crying harder than ever 
now. 

" There, there," he said, consolingly, 
"everything's all right. I'll have your 
mother and father before a court within a 
week. All you've got to do is to keep from 
being drowned in the meanwhile. I'd show 
you something about swimming if I had 
time, but I have only half an hour left to 
pack up and take the train. Good-bye — " 

" But I shall be beaten and starved!" 
shrieked the little girl. 

"Why? " asked her preserver blankly. 

M Because they'll think I've been doing 
business on my own hook and they'll want 
the money — and I won't have any to give 
them." 

"That's a fact," assented he. "Hadn't 
thought of that. I'll fix that all right, 
though. Here's your fifty dollars and you 
can tell them you caught a sucker. I'll get 
even with them later." And Mr. Morrison 
handed her fifty of his remaining dollars, 
kissed her and hastened to his hotel. 

The next afternoon, in high spirits, young 
Mr. Morrison of the Daily Planet walked into 






THE HERO MAKER. 



205 



an uptown resort much frequented by his 
confreres on the daily press of New York. 
Duncan, the free lance and special writer, 
was there, and was telling, bombastically 
as was his wont, of a " story* ' he had just 
written up and sold to the Planet. 




" LITTLE GIRL ACT, YOU KNOW." 

"It's about some clever English swindlers, 
Morrison/ ' said Duncan. "One of them is 
a dwarf (she used to give swimming exhi- 
bitions in Europe, by the way) who poses as 
the daughter (little girl act, you know) of 
the other two. She appeals to the sympa- 
thies of verdant young men by telling them 



206 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

that she is a hero-maker — that is, her 
parents make her fall into the water and be 
rescued by young men seeking glory in the 
eyes of their sweethearts, at fifty dollars a 
head. She is seated, while telling her little 
fairy tale, on a trick chair that collapses at 
about this point, and in she goes. Of 
course Mr. Verdant goes in after her, pulls 
her out and thinks himself a big man. Then 
she plays the clever part of her game. She 
tells him that her parents will think she has 
worked the game and will demand the fifty, 
with whippings and all that sort of thing if 
they don't get it. Of course Mr. Verdant 
produces the long green and — why, where 
are you going, Morrison? " 

"I'm going to the dentist's," answered 
that young man, with a look of disgust on 
his face. And he added to himself, when he 
had reached the street, "to get my eye teeth 
cut." 




T WILL introduce myself as Mr. Frank 
1 Wheaton, one of the younger members 
of the St. Paul bar, and at the period of these 
events visiting in New York. To be as brief 
in explanation as possible, my friends had 
concluded that it was high time for me to 
be married. My protestations were over- 
ruled, and although my heart had never ex- 
perienced the gentle passion for any particu- 
lar girl, I eventually picked one out from the 
number of my fair acquaintances, and decided 
to offer myself to her. Miss Violet Pierson, 
of New York, was as good as she was beauti- 
ful, and was an heiress besides. I arranged 
with my partner for a short vacation, pro- 
ceeded to New York, and offered myself, one 
fine June day, to the young lady, in person. 
Violet received my proposition with as 

[207] 



208 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

much dignity as I had made it, assured me of 
her esteem, told me she would consult with 
her parents and give me an answer on the 
next day. As I had never had the pleasure 
of meeting either her father or mother I left 
with her a photograph of myself with my 
autograph on the back, that they might in 
some manner judge of my character. If I 
had been pleading the cause of another I 
should have marked it 4 'Exhibit A." But 
I have always been careless of my own in- 
terests, and to tell the truth I was so embar- 
rassed during the entire interview that I lost 
for a time all my business acuteness. 

After leaving Violet's Fifth Avenue home, 
I proceeded on my way down town to meet, 
for the first time in several years, my old 
college chum, Jack Dennett. At Union 
Square, I attempted to board a cable car as 
it swung around what I know now as Dead 
Man's Curve. And then — 

Then I awoke in the Presbyterian Hos- 
pital, with Jack bending tenderly over my 
bed. 

"Not a word," said Jack, cautioningly. 
"You are not even to think. You had a 
severe concussion of the brain, my dear fel- 
low, and nothing but complete rest will get 
the contents of that head of yours back into 
shape," 



A POSTMISTRESS PRO TEM. 209 

1 ■ I must see Violet at once, ' ' I whispered. 

"Drop that/' said Jack, authoritatively, 
"You have been seeing violet and every 
color of the rainbow ever since you were 
hurt. Not another word now." 

With that he left me. I will not describe 
the monotonous existence of the next three 
weeks of my life ; but a day came eventually 
when they put me on the cars destined for 
a quiet little town in the Adirondacks, where 
a quiet life, the air of the woods, and abso- 
lute rest from all the worry and care of this 
world were to complete the cure. It was a 
place recommended by a friend of Jack's 
who had once been threatened with insanity. 
He assured Jack that no human being could 
possibly find anything to think about in that 
town except sleeping and eating. Hence it 
was just the place for me. So, off Jack 
shipped me, clad in a suit of clothes from 
his own wardrobe (mine had been ruined in 
the accident) and with linen of all descrip- 
tions, from the same place. Jack and I 
were exact mates in size, so he had not 
troubled himself to go through my trunk 
for supplies. And as he said good-by to me 
the dear fellow shoved seventy-five dollars 
in bills into my hands, a ticket into the 
ribbon around my hat, and a long flat parcel 
14 



2IO THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

done up in brown wrapping paper onto the 
seat beside me. He told me to write to him 
for more money when the seventy-five was 




exhausted, and made me promise to look at 
the contents of the package four times daily 
— before each meal and on going to bed. 
Jack said it was his prescription. By the 
way, Jack was always peculiar. 






A POSTMISTRESS PRO TEM. 211 

That night I slept under the hospitable 
roof of a cleanly old widow, a Mrs. White, 
in the little town of L . I had been en- 
joined to stay there at least six weeks, so I 
paid her in advance my board and wash- 
ing for that time. This left me about $6 in 
cash, most of which I laid out in cheap 
novels, tobacco, pipes, writing materials and 
stamps. And I adorned my room with the 
contents of the brown paper covered parcel. 
It proved to be a framed motto, and the 
mandate on it was "Don't Worry." 

I spent the first few days of my stay in 
writing letters — the first and longest of 
which, you may be sure, was to Miss Violet 
Pierson, explaining at length the reason for 
my failure to call upon her again, and my 
present condition. And I begged her, of 
course, to let me know my fate at once by 
mail. In spite of Jack's motto I was already 
beginning to worry. On the third day of 
my stay I went to the little village post- 
office and asked for letters for Mr. Frank 
Wheaton. I expected to find in the village 
postmaster the usual senile old man so com- 
mon in such places. But framed in the little 
arched window of that country post-office 
was the head of a Venus worthy the hand 
and brush of a Titian. My embarrassment 



212 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

in the presence of Miss Violet Pierson was 
absolutely insignificant compared with my 
trepidation in the presence of this auburn- 
haired, rose-cheeked, star-eyed Postmis- 
tress. In a word I was smitten at first sight. 

"If this be love," thought I, "I've got it 
bad, and I've got something more to worry 
about, too." 

"Have you anything by which to identify 
yourself?" said the pretty Postmistress, 
with a smile that disclosed two rows of 
pearly teeth. 

"Will old letters do?" I asked, falteringly. 

"I guess so," she replied. "But I'm not 
very well informed, and I have to be care- 
ful. You see I'm only Postmistress pro 
tern. This is the way I spend my vacation. 
It's fun for a city girl, you know, and it 
gives my uncle, the real Postmaster, a 
chance to go up in the woods and rest. ' ' 

"Of course you must be careful," said I, 
endeavoring to conceal my embarrassment 
behind a patronizing air. " My mail is of 
the greatest importance. But these letters 
will satisfy you as to my identity." With 
this I drew from the inner pocket of my coat 
a bunch of old letters and handed them to 
her. She glanced at them at first curiously. 
Then she frowned and drew the contents 



A POSTMISTRESS PRO TEM. 21 3 

from several of them and read them hur- 
riedly. Finally she spoke. 

"I believe you asked for mail for Mr. 
Frank Wheaton? " said she. 

I thought her tone a trifle severe. But I 
answered: "I did." 

"Then I am afraid you are not as honest 
as you look, Mr. John Dennett," she re- 
plied, accenting the name in a manner 
peculiar to angry woman. 

The situation nearly took my breath away. 
Jack had left some old letters in his pocket. 
I was wearing his coat, and I had fully 
identified myself as another person. 

"This is an unfortunate mistake," I tried 
to explain, weakly. ' ' I am wearing a coat 
belonging to a friend of mine and did not 
know there were any letters in the pocket. 
Naturally I—" 

4 * Wearing another man's coat," she 
mused. "Goodness, I hope you're not a 
burglar! I must notify our constable the 
moment I close up the office for the day. 
That will be very soon, now. If you want 
to escape you'd better hurry." 

I have been in predicaments before and I 
paid no attention to her — or tried not to. 

Will you be kind enough to tell me 
whether there are any letters here for Mr. 



214 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

Frank Wheaton?" I asked, as coolly as 
possible. 

"O, I don't mind telling you that. In 
fact I have taken especial interest in them. 
You see nobody seems to know who he is, 
and he must be a gentleman, because he has 
a letter from a lady and the envelope is of 
the very latest fashion. I'm going to get 
some of the same kind myself. Besides that, 
there are several letters from men. Now, 
you evidently know who he is, or you would 
not be trying to get his mail. I've done 
you a favor ; will you tell me who he is and 
where he is living? " 

"I am he," I answered. 

u Look me straight in the eyes and repeat 
that," she commanded, very seriously. 

11 I am he," I repeated, looking straight 
into the prettiest blue eyes this side of 
heaven. 

4 'Too bad," she said, with a shake of her 
head. "Mamma told me once that a man 
who could look straight in the eyes and 
could then tell an untruth must be a very 
bad man." 

I turned on my heel and walked out. It 
was time to swear, and it is a matter of 
principle with me never to swear before a 
woman. And I never forget this principle 



A POSTMISTRESS PRO TEM. 



215 



before a pretty woman. I went home to my 
room and looked at Jack's motto. I wanted 




to smash the mocking thing with my 
clenched fist, but I went down to Mrs. 
White for consolation instead. I told her 
my story. This is the consolation I got : 



2l6 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

"Young man," said she, "I suspected you 
from the first. Any man who pays his 
board six weeks in advance ought to be 
suspected. Honest men don't have to do 
that sort of thing. I have no doubt that 
you are John Dennett. Your clothes are all 
marked with that name. And you have 
been trying to steal Mr. Wheaton's letters, 
poor gentleman ! And to think that I should 
harbor such a rascal under my roof! I 
ought to put you out in the street, but I 
need the money and times are hard. One 
thing I will do, though ; I shall put myself 
under the protection of the constable. He 
lives next door, and you just try any of your 
nefarious practices on me if you dare. You 
can stay here until your board money is 
worked out, unless they take you to jail in 
the meanwhile, which I trust and pray they 
will. But you can't stay with me one 
minute after your six weeks is up, even if 
they don't" 

I went from her irate presence to my own 
room and threw a hair brush at Jack's 
motto. It missed. Then I sought the tele- 
graph office and wrote out a telegram to 
Jack. 

"That don't go through this office," said 
the telegraph operator. "You're sending 



A POSTMISTRESS PRO TEM. 217 

that telegram to yourself and signing it with 
another man's name. It's against the rules 
to use the wires for criminal operations. 
O, we're onto you, young feller! " 

I bit my lip and crossed the street to the 
cigar store. When I am in a predicament 
and am studying my way out, I like to chew 
an unlit cigar. The proprietor refused to 
sell me one. 

"Money's too scarce in this region to take 
any risk on counterfeits. I suppose you've 
stuck me already, but if you have I'll have 
the law of you." I left him and sought the 
Postmistress pro tern, once more. I resolved 
to tell her my story and throw myself on 
her womanly mercy. But I learned that she 
had gone out walking. There was but one 
mail a day, and the post-office closed at 2 
p. M. I went to my room after that and 
spent the rest of the day swearing at Jack's 
motto. 

During the following week matters went 
from bad to worse. I left the house but 
once a day now. The fact is I had become 
conspicuous. I went to the post-office once 
each day to expostulate with the Postmis- 
tress pro tern. When I did so grown people 
shunned me and little girls ran crying to 
their mothers. The small boys of the town, 



218 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

however, followed me around in a drove. 
But I went, nevertheless. The fact is, I 
had grown rather fond of expostulating with 
the pretty Postmistress. Shall I say that I 
had also grown rather fond of the Postmis 
tress herself? Well, perhaps more than fond. 
But was a man ever so handicapped in his 
courting? She still insisted on calling me 
Mr. Dennett. I learned, though, that 
another letter had arrived for Mr. Wheaton, 
addressed in the same feminine hand, and 
many more in business envelopes. But not 
one would she deliver to me. 

Disgusted at the absurd situation in which 
I was placed, and at my own unavailing 
efforts to extricate myself from it, I resolved 
one afternoon to vary the monotony of my 
disagreeable vacation by a walk in the 
woods. The course of my wanderings led 
me to the foot of a gnarled old tree whose 
huge limbs were but six or eight feet from 
the ground. I sat down at its base, reclined 
against it, and began studying the matter 
over. I have the habit of talking to myself 
when I am alone. 

"Here I am," I mused, "without money 
enough to get home, and no possible chance 
of getting any unless I renounce my right- 
ful name and tell them to send me money, 



A POSTMISTRESS PRO TEM. 219 

using the name of Jack Dennett. But do I 
want to get home? No, not while that 
auburn-haired Postmistress remains here. 
Here I am, and I have no idea whether I 
have been accepted by Miss Violet Pierson 
or not. But do I want to be accepted by 
Miss Violet Pierson? Decidedly not. Most 
assuredly not, if that auburn-haired Post- 
mistress is neither married nor engaged. 
Now, do I love that auburn-haired Postmis- 
tress? I do, most pronouncedly. I love the 
ground she walks on, the stamps she sells, 
the pen she writes with, and, if I feel that 
way toward her I must love her sincerely, 
for she has got me into the worst mess of 
trouble I ever experienced in my life. But, 
under existing circumstances, I cannot even 
make love to her; I'm blessed if I'll court 
her under the name of Jack Dennett. Let 
Jack do his own courting. And she won't 
recognize me under any other name, nor 
could I entertain her if she did. I have 
money enough left to buy her two or three 
ice creams, but the ice cream man won't sell 
to me any more than the rest of them will. 
Of one thing, though, I am certain. I love 
her, and I am going to marry her if I have 
to break Violet's heart, and — " 

"Keep me up here all the rest of the after- 
noon listening to your nonsense? " 



220 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 



It was the voice of the Postmistress pro 
tern. I looked up. There she was seated 
on a low hanging branch of that self-same 
tree. She had been reading a novel. She 




was blushing and laughing. And she was 
a very picture too. 

"I — I — I — beg your pardon, ' p said I. 

"Well, I think you ought to," she 
answered. "But you needn't be so afraid 



A POSTMISTRESS PRO TEM. 221 

of breaking Violet's heart if you really are 
Mr. Frank Wheaton. See." She held up 
a large rectangular envelope. ' ' It is the last 
letter for Mr. Wheaton from the girl in New 
York," she continued. "And she is either 
sending him her photograph, or she is send- 
ing his back to him. Undoubtedly the 
latter, as he has been such a poor corre- 
spondent. Oh ! ' ■ 

The letter dropped at my feet. 

"Thank you," said I, tearing it open. 
"Do you carry the mail around with you on 
your ramblings?" 

"I do his mail," she answered, faintly, 
"for something told me, the very first day 
a letter came for him, that — that I ought to 
be particularly careful of his mail. Perhaps 
I feared you would steal it, you know." 

"Look," said I, not heeding her. The 
letter contained nothing but the photograph 
I had left with Violet as "Exhibit A." I 
handed it up to her. "Is that identification 
enough ? ' ' 

"It certainly is." 

"Permit me to introduce myself, then," 
said I, "Mr. Frank Wheaton, of St. Paul." 

"I am Miss Frances Baring, of Albany," 
she replied. "And what an awful lot of 
trouble I've got you into ! Here are the rest 



222 THE LITTLE LADY AND MYSELF. 

of your letters. I hope you will not report 
poor dear Uncle Ned." 

"You overheard what I said, when I was 
talking to myself? " I asked. 

"Yes, I couldn't help it," she answered. 

"Well, do you suppose I would do your 
uncle any harm under — under those cir- 
cumstances? " She did not reply for a few 
moments. Then she said : ' ' Did you think 
very much of her? Perhaps — perhaps you 
are engaged to her. p ' 

"Look! " said I. I took the bundle of let- 
ters and looked through them for the reply 
from Violet to my first letter. When I 
found it I held it up before the Postmistress 
pro tern, and tore it, unopened, into small 
pieces and flung them to the breeze. 

"Are you satisfied now? " I asked her. 

I am not going to say what her reply was. 
But I'm glad I didn't smash Jack's motto. 
It hangs in our parlor to-day. 




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